The German Advisory Council on the Environment calls for a fundamental re-orientation of European agricultural policy in its statement on CAP-reform.

The UK's House of Lords EU Committee yesterday published its report on adapting agriculture and forestry to climate change. The Committee’s inquiry has focused on the European Commission White Paper, Adapting to Climate Change: Towards a European framework for action from April 2009.

Many argue that we should first agree on the objectives of the future CAP, then select the most suitable policy instruments, and talk about financing only at the very end. This contribution submits four theses on co-financing, asking ‘how strong is the European interest, and how can CAP contributions to agricultural subsidies be adapted to it’?

In this article, Valentin Zahrnt argues that the case for increasing expenditure on rural development schemes, as the Single Farm Payment is phased out, is far from clear. Indeed, some Axis 1 and 3 payments may even be worse in terms of economic and environmental impacts, whilst Axis 2 payments need to be targeted more effectively at the provision of environmental public goods.

As Member States prepare to submit revised Rural Development Programmes to take account of the Health Check 'new challenges', Finland is developing a grazing measure as part of its strategy to support the dairy sector.