The conference held in Brussels on 19 and 20 July on the future CAP was hosted by the Agriculture Commissioner and presented the results of the public consultation launched in April, followed by discussions on the challenges facing agriculture, the environment and rural areas and what solutions might be most appropriate to tackle these.

Member States now have the freedom to restrict or ban the cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on their territory under new co-existence guidelines as part of a new package of legislative and non-legislative measures adopted by the Commission on 13 July.

Last month, Friends of the Earth Europe organised a conference in the European Parliament on ‘Measuring Europe’s Resource Use: A vital tool in creating a resource efficient EU’. A full write up of the conference is now available.

MEPs voted in favour of George Lyon’s own-initiative report on the future of the CAP at a Plenary session in Strasbourg on 8 July. The report was adopted following an additional last minute amendment broadening the issues that should be defined as public goods to include food security and food safety.

Staged against a backdrop of European milk producer protests, recommendations from the Commission’s High Level Group on Dairy sparked the only major discussion point at the first Agriculture Council under the Belgium Presidency.

A new report launched by BirdLife International finds that current CAP spending intensity is not reflecting any nature conservation priorities nor supporting nature-friendly farms in three key European countries.

A new report released by the European Environment Agency (EEA) highlights the upcoming CAP reform as an important opportunity to address the existing shortcomings of the agricultural sector in terms of biodiversity.

This IEEP paper for the Land Use Policy Group (LUPG) sets out the key issues and questions that need to be considered for the establishment of a Sustainable Production Agenda for Europe and explores the implications of these issues for the development of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the period 2013 – 2020.

Agriculture Ministers had a quiet final gathering under the Spanish Presidency in June’s Agriculture Council held in Luxembourg, where discussions focused on the reopening of negotiations between the EU and the Mercosur bloc, the authorisation of 6 genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and CAP simplification.