Eleven EU countries call for more ‘flexibility’ on CAP’s fallow land rules

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Eleven EU member states, including France, are calling for greater “flexibility” in the previously derogated requirement to leave land fallow under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in a proposal that has left the European Commission perplexed.

Read the original article in French here.

Announced at an informal meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Spain in early September, the French-backed fallow land derogation proposal was presented to the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council on Monday (20 November).

The idea is to allow crops to be grown on fallow land to “maintain biodiversity and production objectives on the European continent”, French Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau said on arrival in Brussels.

Under the current CAP programme, which came into force this year, farmers must, in theory, devote 4% of their arable land to non-productive features such as hedges, groves and fallow land to comply with Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC 8).

The threshold can be reduced to 3% if they include 4% of intermediate catch crops or nitrogen-fixing crops without pesticides to reach 7% of biodiversity-friendly elements.

However, due to the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the urgent need to maintain Europe’s food security, the EU Commission agreed to grant member states two yearly derogations to cultivate this set-aside land, one in 2023 and one in 2022 under the previous CAP.

Partial derogation

But when it comes to derogations, the EU’s agricultural regulations are quite clear: they cannot exceed one year – which means that to receive subsidies under the new CAP, fallow land will have to be brought back into production in 2024.

To get around this restriction, Fesneau, backed by around 10 EU countries, is proposing a “partial application” of this cross-compliance.

“The 7% rate of biodiversity-friendly elements would be maintained, but farmers would be able to reach this rate without respecting the minimum rate of set-aside or non-productive elements,” he told his European counterparts.

In other words, cross-compliance would be maintained, but only catch crops and nitrogen-fixing crops would be required.

For the French minister, this “flexibility” measure would strengthen the EU’s food security, offsetting the slowdown in Ukrainian grain exports and the drop in production by European farmers hit by extreme weather events over the past two years.

“It is imperative that we continue to support Europe’s production potential. Imports of cereals (wheat, barley and maize) should reach 22 million tonnes in 2022, while this year we have reached 40 million tonnes,” stressed Fesneau, calling for domestic production to be brought back under control.

A sceptical Commission

The initiative, co-signed by around 10 countries, was welcomed by most EU delegations.

However, some countries want to go further by abolishing cross-compliance altogether or crop rotation (GAEC7), as Italian Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida proposed.

But while his Dutch counterpart, Piet Adema, suggests speeding up this process to be applied for 2024, Germany’s Cem Özdemir calls for “more information” to ensure that the overall ambition of protecting biodiversity is maintained.

Things are less clear for the European Commission.

After rejecting a full derogation for a third year in August on regulatory grounds, Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski on Monday (20 November) remained sceptical about this new request, however partial it may be.

In his view, the derogations were justified in the last two years because of food safety concerns in the EU and worldwide. Today, however, “the situation is very different”.

“The market has returned to pre-war levels […] We are not in a critical situation in the EU or the world,” he insisted, pointing out that forecasts for protein and oilseed production volumes in the EU are stable.

For Wojciechowski, the concern now is falling prices, which could be exacerbated by increased agricultural production.

However, this proposal “is in line with what has already been granted, so the change cannot be made by means of a Commission implementing act, but by a more comprehensive legislative transformation,” he added, referring to the fact that another derogation would involve the European Parliament and the EU ministers too.

Nevertheless, the Commissioner promised to examine the proposal and assess its potential impact, particularly on the market and farmers’ incomes.