The Agriculture Council met in Brussels on Tuesday 14th December for the last meeting under the 2010 Belgium Presidency. Support for Less Favoured Areas, greening of Pillar One and simplification were among the key issues discussed together with major discussions surrounding the Commission’s dairy reform as well as a revision of the EU quality rules.

Two new reports have been published that evaluate the operation of specific Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) policy measures. The Commission’s report focuses on evaluating the implementation of the Farm Advisory System (FAS) to date and the European Court of Auditors’ report looks at the effectiveness of the Leader approach.