Yesterday, 28 June, the Agrifish EU Council in Luxembourg gave the green light for the proposal to reform the Common Agricultural Policy after 2020, in the wake of three years of negotiations and following the agreement reached in the Trilogue between the three European institutions last Friday in Brussels.
Important progress has been made on climate and environmental aspects, with particular reference to financial support for risk management instruments that will be able to use up to 3% of direct payments and rural development funds.
The new green architecture, one of the most discussed points in the whole package, will be based on environmental conditions to be met by farmers and on voluntary additional measures under both pillars; an effectiveness-based approach whereby Member States have to report annually on their progress.
The compromise provides for the definition of mandatory active farmer, mandatory redistributive payment to 10%, except for specific derogations, the voluntary smallholder scheme and the internal convergence level of direct payments of at least 85% of the average level of direct payments by 2026. For coupled aid, the same level of 13%+2% of direct payments was maintained.
The next step will be to build the national strategic plans that must be focused on simplicity: not increasing bureaucracy represents added value for Italy. Social Conditionality is certainly one of the qualifying points of the new CAP, together with the interventions planned for the ecological transition of our agri-food system», said the Italian Minister of Agricultural Policies, Stefano Patuanelli.