Outlook 2009: A fundamental reform of the CAP?

The EU’s most controversial policy – the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – is to be subjected to the most thorough and in-depth review in its 40-year history under a process which begins later this year.

Under an agreement struck by EU leaders in 2005, the European Commission has been mandated to go back to first principles in reviewing the rationale for spending its €100 billion-plus annual budget in the way that it does, and to make proposals for a new financial framework to apply from 2014 onwards. The mandate specifically explicitly states that the CAP should be included as part of this exercise, and pro-reformers will want the Commission to question why the EU should spend over 40% of its annual budget supporting a sector that contributes only a couple of percent to the EU’s GDP.

The Commission may not propose the kind of wholesale cuts in the CAP budget that reformist countries like the UK would like - but it will undoubtedly take the opportunity to prepare the ground for far-reaching changes to the CAP for the period after 2013.

The crucial discussions over the future shape of the CAP will be kick-started in London on March 11-12 at Agra Europe’s 28th Annual Agricultural Outlook conference. This event, long viewed as one of the most important and prestigious events in the agricultural policy calendar, will this year bring together as its headline speakers Hilary Benn, the UK’s Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Klaus-Dieter Borchardt, Deputy Head of Cabinet to EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.

The conference will review all aspects of the present-day CAP, including the aftermath of last November’s "Health Check" agreement, the future prospects for increasingly volatile agricultural commodity markets, an analysis of rising input costs, the mounting challenge of water supplies to the agriculture industry, and the opportunities offered by new bio-energy technologies.

Speakers include senior representatives of the Governments of Austria and France, as well as the FAO, the European Environment Agency, the UK National Farmers Union and – offering a more global perspective - the International Food Policy Research Institute of Ethiopia.

Outlook 2009: Assessing the Future for European Agriculture in a Global Market

Crowne Plaza City Hotel, London, March 11-12 2009