EU Parliament sets stakes for future CAP: autonomous budget, less bureaucracy, more direct payments

Brussels – The EU Parliament defends the Common Agricultural Policy of the future and warns the European Commission: the CAP should not be “integrated with other funding areas” as Ursula von der Leyen proposed in July in the draft Multiannual Financial Framework (2028-2034). Not only that: the equation will also have to include fewer administrative burdens for farmers and more enhanced direct payments. 

These are the stakes set out in a non-binding resolution, adopted today (10 September) by the Strasbourg Chamber with 393 votes in favour, 145 against, and 123 abstentions. The post-2027 budget of the Union’s longest-running programme—first launched in 1962—will need to be more substantial, but above all, autonomous, effectively rejecting the EU Commission’s idea of supplementing agricultural funds with other expenditure chapters. 

“A clear message comes from the Parliament to the Commission: we will not accept fewer resources for the CAP within the new Multiannual Financial Framework nor the amalgamation of the funds for the agricultural sector, for cohesion, and for social policies in a single national cauldron,” promises Camilla Laureti, MEP of the PD and responsible for agriculture for the Dem delegation. Along the same lines, Carmen Crespo Díaz, MEP for the People’s Party and Parliament’s chief negotiator on the future of agriculture, warns: “As things stand, the common agricultural policy risks being sidelined in the EU’s long-term budget. This is unacceptable, and we will fight to have it rewritten.” 

For the EPP, summarises Crespo Díaz, the message to the EU leader and the Commissioner for Agriculture, Cristophe Hansen—both party members—”is simple: reduce bureaucracy, lighten the burdens and let farmers farm.” In the resolution, MEPs call for direct payments to remain available to all active and professional farmers, based on the area cultivated, and for administrative simplification to be made a priority in the next financial year, as well as digitalisation of agriculture and incentives for sustainable practices, water management, and the circular economy. 

Laureti also claims a passage, obtained by the Socialist Group (S&D), which provides for “a partial shift away from direct payments based on agricultural area, in order to direct more resources to the most vulnerable farmers, family farms, SMEs, young and female farmers, and farms that adopt more sustainable practices.” 

Finally, the Strasbourg Chamber asks the Commission to bear in mind a worrying fact: 58 per cent of farmers are over 55 years old, and only 6 per cent are under 35. The recipe: “Increase tax and credit incentives to remove obstacles to starting an agricultural business.”