The leaked CAP proposals have sparked initial reactions by a number of policy stakeholders.

The Commission published its Legal Proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2013 on 12 October 2011. This is the first time that decisions on CAP reform have involved the European Parliament as well as the European Council under the ordinary legislative procedure. As such there is considerable uncertainty as to how long the process of negotiation and reaching agreement will take.

Today’s proposals from the Commission on the future CAP could have represented a major step towards improved environmental management across the EU, but in practice they leave major doubts over how much really will be delivered. Bold ambitions to green the CAP have become diluted by a focus on increasing the legitimacy of direct payments to farmers - at the expense of measures capable of maximising the delivery of environmental public goods. One of the reasons for this is that the new green payments under Pillar 1 have to be applicable in all parts of the EU and paid annually. This creates real challenges for sustaining substantive environmental improvements over time.

Debate on the forthcoming draft CAP proposals from the Commission has warmed up rapidly with the end of the summer break. Views on how various leaked proposals would impact on farming and the environment are being put forward with some urgency. The potential environmental benefits to be had from the proposal to allocate 30 per cent of the future Pillar 1 direct payments to support ‘green’ practices has been recognised. However, the degree to which it could deliver successfully for the environment depends on a variety of issues that have been highlighted in a new paper drawn up by BirdLife International. This has been produced to coincide with the Commission’s Inter-Service Consultation on Commissioner Ciolos’ CAP reform proposals, expected to occur in early September.

The Slow Food International Headquarters in Bra, Italy, are conducting a research project that looks at the issues facing young food producers in European countries.

The UK House of Lords select committee inquiry into Innovation in EU Agriculture was published on 7 July 2011. The aim of the inquiry was to establish how innovation in EU agriculture can be encouraged in relation to the EU’s new Strategy for Growth and Jobs, Europe 2020, and in the context of new challenges such as climate change, water scarcity and the need to encourage increased production and competitiveness in a sustainable way.

As a contribution to the debate on the design of the future CAP, IEEP has produced a paper that sets out a series of conditions that the European Commission’s proposals for ‘greening’ Pillar 1 need to meet if a substantive ‘greening’ is to be achieved in practice in order to deliver their objective of improving environmental outcomes across most of the EU farmed landscape.

The Commission College debated for a long day before agreeing their proposals for the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) late on Wednesday evening. The CAP (€372 billion) remains a sizeable element of the Budget but now accounts for a fractionally smaller share of the overall MFF cake than the Cohesion Policy (€376 billion). The two Pillars remain and the basic structure of the CAP is not radically altered although the formal objectives now reflect the priorities of Europe 2020 much more explicitly. Indeed promoting resource efficiency has pride of place in the new objectives along with 'smart, sustainable and inclusive growth'.

In the run up to the announcement of the Commission’s proposals on the EU budget for 2014-2020, rumours abound that a large slice of Pillar 2 of the CAP, essential for delivering environmental management throughout the EU-27, may be sacrificed to avoid significant cuts to Pillar 1 direct payments to farmers.

While the CAP reform debate is in full swing, the UK countries have been consulting on the structure and content of their future agricultural policies as part of the transition away from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

30 actions to transform the Commission’s proposals into a genuine transition tool.

Just a few days before EU Agriculture Ministers meet for the informal Council in Vienna and on the basis of the preparatory questions sent by the presidency to the delegations, the authors of this blog post identify the key elements for securing vibrant rural areas in the future CAP.

Those of us with long memories of CAP reforms know that there can be many dramas, dead ends and diversions along the way. Nonetheless, there has been a discernible direction of travel for two decades or more.