EU CAP Mandate Agreed by Council 26/06/2013 Scotland’s farmers should benefit from the new CAP which rewards activity, supports production and encourages greener choices. The deal – which gives the EU Presidency a mandate to negotiate with the EU Parliament today (Wednesday) and agree a final package - should see new entrants benefit while slipper farmers lose out. However, disappointment remains at the impact the reduced budget negotiated by the UK Government will have and the low rate they agreed to for coupled payments – which will see Scottish farmers lose out financially compared to farmers in other countries. Speaking immediately after talks concluded in Luxembourg just after midnight, Scotland’s Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead said: “After almost two-years of hard fought negotiations the key principles agreed tonight should mean a better CAP policy for Scotland than the one we currently have, albeit like with all negotiations such as these we didn’t get everything we would have liked. “One of the main achievements is the insertion of the ‘Scottish clause’ which means that new CAP should reward current activity – we will not be paying for what farmers were doing a decade ago and so-called slipper farmers will no longer benefit. “This underlines the importance of CAP to support production, and the new deal is focussed on doing this in a green way, while maintaining employment and supporting our rural communities. “The new greening of CAP takes into account that Scotland is already green with mixed farming creating diverse landscapes and should provide the intended environmental benefits, however the Commission must ensure that implementation decisions are sensible and do not place undue burdens on farmers or administrations or create unintended consequences. “The deal should also bring relief for new entrants albeit they have got to wait until 2015 to feel the benefit. We successfully pushed for a National Reserve which will allow us to top up payment entitlements for recent new entrants and others with low historic value entitlements during the transition to full area-based payments and ensure future new entrants can access the system. “The biggest disappointment – on top of the UK’s budget betrayal – is the two tier support for livestock and finding ourselves in the lower tier when Scotland is a livestock country. The importance of coupled to payments to Scotland’s farmers being consistently overlooked by the DEFRA Secretary of State was a huge frustration and one which will cost our industry dearly. “There is still a lot of work to go to get the final deal ratified by the EU Parliament and then attention will turn to implementation. As we enter the next phase we will be working hard to choose options that are right for Scotland, to push the UK Government for a fair share of the UK’s CAP allocation for our farmers and to try to ensure the EU Commission serves up workable implementation rules.”
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 16:47:10 +0000
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