The European Parliament hearing for the Agriculture Commissioner-designate, Phil Hogan, took place on 2 October. Sticking mainly to the parameters set out for him in Juncker’s mission letter, Hogan focussed on the role of agriculture and its potential to contribute to growth, jobs and food security. Of relevance to the environmental agenda, Hogan showed an understanding of many the sustainability issues affecting agriculture in relation to resource management (such as protecting water and soils) and adapting to and mitigating climate change. Unfortunately, the potential of agriculture to deliver benefits for biodiversity was overlooked during the three hour hearing.

The CAP 2014-2020 legislative package was announced on 17 December 2013. The Commission adopted the delegated acts on 11 March 2014. The Council and European Parliament have a two month period from that date (until 11 May) in which they can reject them, but if there are no objections they will be adopted. The implementing regulations are expected to be adopted soon after. However, with implementation of the new direct payment arrangements coming into force on 1 January 2015, Member States have already started to consider their decisions on the many options for implementing the new Pillar 1 architecture. This article provides a broad overview of the state of play in Member States

The European Parliament and the Council have reached political agreement for transitional measures for the CAP for 2014 – both for direct payments and rural development. The regulations set out the technical arrangements that will apply for 2014 in advance of the new direct payments regulations coming into force in 2015 and to allow rural development funding to continue in advance of the approval of the new suite of RDPs. These extend the existing rules for one more year, although Member States will also be able to introduce a small number of elements agreed in the recent reform package.

The final political agreement on the CAP reform package hinged on finding common ground on three outstanding MFF related issues; the issue of degressivity, transfers between funds and higher EU cofinancing for rural development in certain areas. The outcome; EU institutions agreed to a mandatory five per cent reduction for payments exceeding €150,000, with an exemption for those Member States using more than five per cent of their national ceiling for the redistributive payment on the first hectares of land; no changes will be made to the provisions for transfers between funds to those agreed by Heads of State in February; and higher EU cofinancing rates for rural development in certain parts of the EU will be permitted.

Negotiations on the reform of the CAP are entering their last stage. The European Parliament is challenging the Council deal concluded in June which settled the MFF (EU spending 2014-2020) but, controversially, included commitments on aspects of the CAP as well. The EP is challenging the legitimacy of this incursion into the CAP, potentially giving rise to a further round of negotiations with the Council which may or may not be prepared to concede changes to the June deal.

Achieving a political agreement on the CAP reform last week was undeniably a huge achievement given both the controversial nature of some of the proposals and that this was the first full reform involving co-decision with the European Parliament as well as 27 Member States. However, recognition of this achievement does not detract from the fact that this is a deeply disappointing reform for the environment.

IEEP press release on the revised Common Agricultural Policy.