With the protests of farmers still very present in several member states and the European elections on their heels, Brussels is trying to calm the waters again. Yesterday, the Community Executive proposed new measures that aim to ease "the administrative burden" of the sector, and that will particularly affect small agricultural holdings, those of less than ten hectares, which are to be exempted from controls and penalties in environmental requirements.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, advanced the measures to the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, in a call, when its farmers have been protesting for weeks, also due to the entry of products from Ukraine. Specifically, the Commission has proposed a battery of measures that limit the environmental requirements that farmers are obliged to meet with the new common agricultural policy (CAP); a total of ten rules, with environmental and climate commitments.
Changes are proposed so that farmers with small holdings are exempt from controls and penalties in case of non-compliance with the conditionality measures. This would respond to part of the demands of the sector, which regrets the excessive burdens and measures they have to take since the new CAP was adopted, just two years ago, as well as the new environmental rules. According to the defense of the Community Executive, the measure could favor 65% of the beneficiaries of the CAP, but it would allow to maintain the ambitions in the matter of environment, because this type of surfaces only represent 9.6% of the total that receive aid from the European agricultural policy.
Likewise, Brussels also adds other specific modifications. For example, they will no longer have to meet a minimum percentage of agricultural land dedicated to non-productive land, including fallow land. From the obligation, we will move to a system of incentives, known as eco-schemes, which are premiums and aid to ranchers and farmers so that they take into account sustainable practices and in accordance with the fight against climate change.
Another issue is crop rotation, where farmers will be able to choose between crop rotation or supporting crop diversification, depending on the conditions. Likewise, countries will also have more flexibility on minimum land coverage in "sensitive periods". Regarding the latter, they will be able to have more facilities to define what a sensitive period is, especially with increasingly extreme climatic situations, with periods of drought or floods.
Precisely because of the climate crisis, farmers are the first to be affected by adverse weather conditions. For this reason, and if they are prevented from properly working their lands, governments will be able to apply temporary exceptions in which they will be exempt from meeting the requirements for a limited time. Another innovation is that the plowing and restoration of permanent pastures will be allowed in places protected by the Natura 2000 network (until now it was prohibited), in case some pastures are damaged by invasive species or predators.
The European Commission insists that the measures are "sufficiently calibrated and limited in time" to continue to maintain the same level of environmental ambition of the CAP, and it is expected that they will be approved next month by the Parliament and the countries. Likewise, Brussels rejects accusations that the level of the climate fight is reduced in favor of farmers and does not believe that there is a dichotomy between environment and agriculture. "Farmers are experiencing serious difficulties, but these proposals do little to solve them and are limited to eliminating some of the last opportunities for environmental protection in the EU's agricultural policy", criticized Greenpeace yesterday. The agricultural sector is responsible for 11% of pollutant emissions in the EU.
