Big EU farm subsidies under scrutiny at key reform talks

EU officials are holding key talks aimed at reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – the biggest spending item in the EU budget.

Ministers reached a joint negotiating position on Tuesday, and now they are discussing the reforms with Euro MPs and the European Commission.

There are calls to cut the subsidies for big intensive farms so that smaller farmers can get more.

There are also fears that incentives for protecting wildlife may be diluted.

The CAP and payments for rural development account for nearly 40% of the EU’s long-term budget. The plan is to spend about 50bn euros (£42bn; $65bn) annually on agriculture in 2014-2020.

The lead negotiator for EU governments, the Republic of Ireland’s Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney, warned that "there are some difficult issues to resolve".

The BBC’s Chris Morris in Brussels says that under the proposed deal, large farms could lose up to 30% of their subsidies.

Each farmer would receive at least 60% of the average national or regional subsidy per hectare, meaning more support for small and medium-sized farms than is the case now.

There remain some major sticking points in the negotiations, such as the planned phasing out of sugar quotas – quotas that keep the price of sugar artificially high in the EU – and a proposal to cap subsidies at 300,000 euros annually per farm.

The definition of an "active farmer" has also been contentious. The current payments system is largely based on land area and past subsidy levels, meaning that landowners like airports and sports clubs, which do not farm, have been getting subsidies on the basis of their grasslands or other eligible land areas.

The ministers have agreed on a "short mandatory negative list comprising airports, railway services, waterworks, real estate services and permanent sports and recreational grounds".

Our correspondent says the UK agriculture minister abstained in voting on one of four new regulations, arguing that some member states wanted to go back to the days of butter mountains and wine lakes.

In the 1970s and 80s the CAP took up a bigger share of the EU budget because there were more subsidies for farmers simply to produce. That led to wasteful overproduction.

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/