This time it’s the right one. The European Commission announced on Wednesday August 31 that it had validated the French plan to implement the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) over the period 2023-2027. She had challenged a first version deemed insufficiently green. The EU executive has also given the green light to plans by Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain, according to a statement.
In April, the Commission asked France, the first country to benefit from CAP funds, to review its “strategic plan”castigating “the low level of environmental and climate ambition” of the first version transmitted at the end of December, with in particular insufficient support for organic products. Paris had presented its new version at the beginning of July.
The new CAP, which will apply from January 2023, has a budget of 387 billion euros until 2027 – i.e. almost a third of the multiannual budget of the European Union – of which 270 billion direct aid to farmers. Validated last year by the Member States and the European Parliament, it plans in particular to grant bonuses to farmers participating in more demanding environmental programs, using more ecological techniques or contributing to improving animal well-being. States will have to devote an average of 25% per year of direct payments to these “eco-diets” over the period 2023-2027.
Each country had to transmit its “national strategic plan” (how it will actually distribute European aid) to the Commission, so that it can verify compliance with the spirit of the new CAP and the food strategy “Farm to Fork” (50% reduction in pesticides by 2030, with a quarter of the land reserved for organic).
Among the weaknesses of the initial French plan, Brussels had criticized the fact that Paris allows farmers certified “High environmental value” (HVE), whose criteria are much less restrictive than organic, to benefit from the highest level of aid provided for in the framework of eco-regimes. The Commission also asked France to “define crop rotation prescriptions”, that serve to promote biodiversity and reduce the consumption of fertilizers, and not to apply a “general rule” of diversification.
On July 1, the French government had presented new arbitrations, proposing to increase aid from eco-schemes for organic farms, by “creating a specific level”, and to reinforce the requirements (water management, biodiversity, reduction of pesticides) of the HVE label, the object of numerous criticisms from defenders of agroecology.