Highland 2010: Adapt CAP to make it more credible – Ciolos

Increasing awareness of the benefits to the public of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy will be the key to making direct support payments more palatable to consumers across member states, according to European farm commissioner Dacian Ciolos.

Mr Ciolos raised the issue when he addressed a seminar during a brief visit to the opening day of the Royal Highland Show near Edinburgh. 

The Commissioner insisted that the CAP had to be more adapted to the expectations of European citizens and said too much was currently made of the distinction between the first and second pillars. “There’s no such thing as a good pillar and a bad pillar”.

Mr Ciolos said he was investigating ways of making the first pillar – which accounts for direct payments and market support and 70% of the CAP’s total €50bn budget – more credible and understandable.

Less Favoured Area payments were one way of demonstrating this as taxpayers understood they rewarded natural disadvantage, he said.

The gain from the second – rural development – pillar was more easily understood because payments were multiannual and projects more visible in terms of outcome.

Addressing a small invited audience composed of the key players in Scotland’s food and farming industry, Mr Ciolos spelled out the key elements of his CAP reform agenda.

The need for farmers to provide “public good” was paramount, he said, together with the necessity of maintaining diversity of land use across the Community’s 27 member states and their numerous regions.

His third key target for the CAP was to address environmental challenges.

“In future we must combine economic competitiveness with environmental sustainability and the social sustainability of agriculture in rural areas,” he said.

Questioned on his approach to historically based direct payments Mr Ciolos was adamant that he wanted to see fairer distribution of funds.

“It’s important to have clear objectives,” he said. “To give money based on historic production is very difficult for taxpayers to understand.”

Mr Ciolos revealed that the feedback to his public consultation on CAP reform had attracted 5700 contributions from across Europe in just two months. That contrasted with the usual response of just 1000 comments. 

The ideas expressed focused on farm incomes, the diversity of food, animal welfare, the better utilization of natural resources and the quality of farmland.

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