The European Commission published, on the 17th September, the draft national allocations of the Common Agricultural Policy, for the period 2028-2034 in the context of the on going negotiations of the next multi-annual financial framework.
Given the stated desire by the European Commission to focus the CAP on “those who need it most”, questions arise as to the relevance and modalities of a distribution key that makes the Netherlands, by far, the relative “winners” of the European Commission’s proposal, or the « best looser ». Without undermining the importance of the agricultural sector in the Netherlands, and its high productivity per hectare, it’s important to remind that over the last years, farmers in this Member State benefited a national top up of confortable State Aids which overall represents at least 100% of their direct payments during the last 4 years.
Belgium also benefit substantially, in relative terms, from the new allocation, as well as Spain and Portugal to a lesser extent. If France, Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia overall keep their share of the (smaller) CAP budget, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Greece, Danemark and Luxembourg are on the side of the loosers.
This first assessment takes into account the fact that all Member States are not benefiting from the POSEI programme (out-most regions). It will have to be fine-tuned integrating the LEADER programmes and taking into account the destiny of sectorial programs that are not part of the budget within the National and Regional Partnership ring-fenced for the future CAP. However this fine-tuning of the calculation should not change substantially the trend.
Overall France remains the first beneficiary of this policy, in front of Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland and Romania.
O artigo foi publicado originalmente em Farm Europe.