The requirements of the EU agricultural policy are softened after the farmers demonstrated

The European Parliament (EP) has given the green light to the revision of the EU agricultural policy, the aim of which is to reduce the administrative burden on EU farmers, the body’s statement says.

The revision of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) changes the rules of three environmental conditions that are expected in exchange for subsidies. It also gives EU countries more flexibility to grant exemptions from the regulations if they find it difficult to apply them or if extreme weather causes problems.

Small farms of less than ten hectares would be exempted from inspections and sanctions for non-compliance with CAP rules.

In order to speed up the adoption of the measures, the EP agreed to discuss the matter with an emergency procedure. (Representatives held their last plenary session this week before being re-elected June 6-9.) The panel approved the review Wednesday with 425 votes in favor, 130 votes against, and 33 abstentions.

The amendments must be approved even by the Council made up of the governments of the member states, but it has practically already reached an agreement with the EP. After the ministers give their approval, the law will be announced and it will immediately come into force. From 2024 onwards, farmers can use the revised set of environmental protection conditions when applying for EU support.

In addition, the EP decided on Tuesday not to raise objections to the Commission’s proposal supplementing the CAP simplification package. Thus, the member states are given more room for maneuver when applying the requirement of the CAP that (compared to 2018) at least five percent of the agricultural area must be kept as permanent grassland.

In recent months, farmers have demonstrated in several European countries, which Viktor Orbán, among others, is trying to take advantage of. He also kicked off the campaign for the European Parliament elections on June 9 in a granary, convincing the farmers with Brussels, and Agriculture Minister István Nagy recently spoke about how European agriculture has never been under so much green ideological pressure as in the past period. (We last discussed the domestic situation in this article.)

The European People’s Party is already trying to declare itself the “party of the farmers”. The topic also plays an important role in the campaign of Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, who belongs to the center-right party family and is preparing for a reshuffle, and she is courting the agricultural votes with several measures, we wrote more about this here.