the European Commission proposes to unravel the environmental rules of the common agricultural policy

Member states and MEPs should examine these proposals quickly with a view to possibly endorsing them by the end of April.

Fallows, hedges, crop rotation, small farms… The European Commission proposed, on Friday March 15, legislative revisions to drastically ease the environmental rules of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), strongly contested by the sector across the EU.

Member states and MEPs should examine these proposals quickly with a view to possibly endorsing them by the end of April. “The objective is to further reduce the administrative burden, to give farmers and states greater flexibility to comply with certain conditions, without reducing the overall level of environmental ambition”said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The end of fallow regulations

Thus, farms must currently leave at least 4% of arable land fallow or non-productive areas (hedges, groves, ponds, etc.). A criterion that has become a scarecrow for farmers demonstrating in the EU. After granting a temporary suspension for 2023 and then 2024, Brussels is proposing to completely remove the obligation from the legislation, leaving only the ban on trimming hedges during nesting periods.

The obligation to rotate crops, with a crop different from the previous year on 35% of arable land, could for its part be replaced by simple “diversification”. For the ban on bare floors during sensitive periods, “the idea would be that these periods are not rigid, that the State can define them flexibly taking into account regional differences”, explained Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski.

Another major change: the Commission is proposing to exempt farms of less than 10 hectares from controls and penalties linked to environmental conditions – which represent 65% of CAP beneficiaries, but only cover 9.6% of the surface area. Finally, States would have until the end of 2025 to translate into their national plans the updating over time of European environmental and climate legislation.

NGOs denounce an “electoralist” dismantling

In the event of extreme climatic episodes (drought, floods, etc.) preventing farmers from complying with the requirements of the CAP, States would be free to introduce temporary exemptions, reserved for the operators concerned so that they do not incur costs. penalty.

Environmental NGOs denounce dismantling “electoralist” of the green architecture of the CAP, with no guarantee of defusing the agricultural malaise. “Blindly abandoning environmental measures will not appease farmers suffering from unfair prices and the climate emergency, with long-term sustainability needs”argues Anu Suono of the WWF.