No cuts to CAP budget, insist MEPs

The European Union's agriculture spending should be at least maintained at its current level until 2020, MEPs said today.

Setting out its position ahead of negotiations over the EU's seven year post-2013 budget, the European Parliament backed a report which rejects cuts to rural development aid. The CAP accounts for around 48 per cent of total EU spending.

The report calls on the EU to finance incentives for farmers who use sustainable methods. Payments to farmers through the CAP should be linked to targets on emissions reduction, renewable energy and environmentally-friendly techniques, MEPs said.

Payments should be distributed more fairly, the report says, by guaranteeing every member state a minimum percentage of the EU average and placing a ceiling on the amount any individual farmer can receive. Measures to counter speculation in agricultural commodities – which can increase price volatility – and to monitor the milk market to ensure supplies were also backed.

Albert Dess, agriculture spokesman for the centre-right European People's party, the largest group of MEPs in the parliament, said: "The EU's agricultural policy will need to provide food security in the face of a growing world population. Moreover, the contribution of European farmers is crucial for the protection of the environment. The future common agricultural policy must meet both aims.

"With today's vote, the parliament is sending a clear signal in favour of a strong EU agricultural policy. Now it is the European Commission's turn. Its legislative proposal must show how food security in Europe will be ensured in the future, and how an adequate livelihood for our farmers, including sufficient planning security, can be maintained." The commission will make its own proposals in autumn before parliament and the European Council decide on the final legislation.

The European Conservatives and Reformists group supported the report tentatively, arguing that the most important objective was freeing farmers from red tape. James Nicholson MEP said: "The parliament's position is not perfect. For example we fundamentally disagree with the idea of capping payments to large farms and we do not like some of the social and market interventionist ideas in it."

He added that the report "at least tries to continue the basic idea set forward in previous CAP reforms: that farmers should be freed up from regulation and red tape and able to respond to market forces".

But the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats voted against the report, saying it did not go far enough. "As a result of many negotiations, it has moved some way towards making real reforms to the CAP. But it still doesn't go far enough in the direction of a market-oriented policy that focuses on resources and energy efficiency and a reduction in carbon emissions," said ALDE MEP George Lyon.