EU Commission to revisit CAP greening rules

EU farm commissioner Phil Hogan has said proposed changes to the greening rules will be published before this summer
EU farm commissioner Phil Hogan has said proposed changes to the greening rules will be published before this summer

The new CAP greening rules came into force for the first time last year and Commissioner Hogan has pledged to simplify the rules where he can. In order to inform the simplification efforts, the Commission has launched an online consultation seeking views on experiences from the first 12 months.

The NFU has welcomed efforts by the EU Commission to gather experiences on implementing the new CAP greening rules.

Gail Soutar, Chief Economics and International Affairs Adviser said, “The NFU welcomes the Commission’s efforts to simplify the CAP rules. Overly burdensome regulation and specifically CAP reform is consistently cited by our members as having the biggest negative impact on business confidence.

“The new rules were introduced with very little time for farmers to prepare and in many cases guidance was changing throughout the application window. The full impact of that is only now being felt as farmers face late payments and in some cases reductions in the value of their payments due to errors and mistakes being identified. “

The NFU has previously identified a number of measures that should be taken to simplify the CAP, including for greening. We will make sure that these are drawn to the attention of the Commission and will push for their inclusion in a package of technical amendments expected to be published in the summer of 2016.

NFU will respond on behalf of members to the consultation and will be encouraging members to send their responses to the European Commission directly.

2015 was the first year the new CAP came into force, including the “greening requirements” (crop diversification, ecological focus areas and maintenance of permanent grassland.)

Simplifying the new rules has been identified as one of the key political priorities of Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan.

The Commissioner has announced that he will present a package of changes to the implementing and delegated acts pertaining to greening before the summer of 2016. Any changes should then be applicable from claim year 2017.