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CPE met the President of the European Agriculture Council. |
On the day of the EU Agriculture Council meeting
in Brussels and a few days before the informal Council meeting in
Finland on the issue of the « European model of agriculture », Mr
Korkeaoja, Finnish Minister for agriculture, met a delegation of CPE on
September 18.
CPE exposed the main following points:
- To speak about a « European agriculture model » is only relevant if
the CAP is doing everything possible to maintain and develop
sustainable family farming in all regions. Now the CAP never stopped to
change in parallel to the US Farm Bill, favoured the concentration and
the industrialisation of agricultural production, and makes the farms
disappear which correspond to the image of agriculture the EU tries to
promote. For example the present CAP favours the intensive milk
production model, based on maize and soja, even when the model based on
grass and vegetal proteins, produced on the farm and good for the
environment, has a better self-government and a better economical
competitiveness.
- To go, as the Finnish Presidency points out, towards an
“economically, ecologically and socially sustainable European
Agriculture », the CAP has to be changed deeply:in fact the present
CAP:
is out of international legitimacy: the EU continues to export
agricultural products at prices below their costs of production (by
using the decoupled direct payments put in the WTO green box, instead
of export subsidies): it is not enough to change the instrument for
changing the policy.
is out of social legitimacy: the subsidies, very unfair distributed,
don’t reach the farmers, sectors, countries who need it most and they
are not used to maintain employment nor to develop a sustainable family
farming.
is out of environmental legitimacy because it continues to favour the
industrialisation of agriculture and animal production, leaving the
citizens paying for the damages to the environment and health.
- For the CAP review in 2008, the main challenges will be around the
international trade negotiations, the EU budget, and the energy crisis.
The present CAP has to be re-orientated, beginning with a fairer
distribution of the direct payments (with a significant ceiling per
annual work unit and a compensation for less favoured areas) and the
introduction of a social cross compliance to favour rural employment.
This is a necessary step towards a CAP which will give priority to fair
agricultural prices for the farmer’s income, supply management, and
less intensive production.
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