President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan met with Gijs Schilthuis, the EU Commission’s director of sustainability at DG Agriculture where CAP funding dominated discussions.
“There is no point sugar-coating this matter,” he said. “Unless the budget allocation to CAP is increased substantially from the minimum €300bn proposed – which, by the way, represents an €87bn cut on the current allocation – then CAP has no chance of meeting its stated objectives. It will not support sustainable agriculture, and it will certainly fail to maintain the EU model of agriculture based on the family farm.
“We told Mr Schilthuis categorically that an adequately funded and index-linked CAP is absolutely essential to the future of EU farming and must be strongly supported by our own Government”, said the ICMSA president.
In relation to other matters, Mr Drennan said that ICMSA made it clear that CAP cannot be expected to support and fund all the additional environmental and other measures being imposed on farmers and separate budget headings will be required to address these matters.
He said there were also blunt messages delivered on the question of the Commission’s so-called simplification drive: “Talk to any farmer and they will tell you that they have seen no evidence of simplification at farm level. Just this year, in the throes of this ‘simplification’ effort, we have seen further regulations added in relation to veterinary medicines and nitrates to name just two issues, while the insanely illogical EU deforestation regulations have only been postponed, not taken off the table completely. “Farmers understand the need for a level of regulation but are utterly frustrated by its unnecessary complexity and the constant loading and reloading of submissions on farmers where the Commission already has access to the information it’s demanding. What makes this even more irritating is that the Commission persists with this practice while trying to ratify Mercusor where, realistically, we are entitled to have zero confidence in the regulatory process that’ll be applied to the farmers and beef exporters in the South American countries. Confidence and trust in both the Commission and the process is collapsing under the contradictions that have been allowed develop and become embedded,” said Mr Drennan.
He said the litmus test is the budget that will be allocated to CAP: “We’ll know immediately whether the Commission is in earnest and serious or whether they are just going through the motions yet again.”