Wojciechowski is ‘grateful’ for farmers’ protests, CAP should be based on incentives,

EU Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski told Euractiv he is grateful for the recent wave of farmers’ protests, which helped ensure a swift response to their problems with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a system that should be based on incentives, not obligations.

The final stages of negotiations and the entry into force of a greener CAP reform marked the beginning of the current EU legislature, but it is ending with farmers’ protests all over Europe and the questioning of its green rules.

“I am grateful to the farmers for those protests. They helped us to react quickly enough to the sector’s problems,” Wojciechowski said in an exclusive interview with Euractiv.

The EU institutions responded to the demonstrations with a package loosening environmental requirements for farmers to access CAP aids and granting member states greater flexibility to implement the policy. 

One of the most remarkable changes was the switch in the fallow land rule: farmers will no longer be required to maintain a minimal share of non-productive land. Instead, they can choose to do so under an incentivising aid system called the eco-scheme. 

According to Wojciechowski, changes like this ensure that the most controversial elements of the CAP green rules are scrapped.

For Wojciechowski, the Green Deal was not a mistake, but a considerable part of the CAP green component was impossible for farmers to implement.

“My message to my successor is that to achieve ambitious goals, the focus should be on incentives, not obligations. If we want to make agriculture greener, we should provide farmers with help.” Wojciechowski said.

The Polish commissioner, proposed by the former national government, is aware that he is not Warsaw’s next candidate for a post in the Commission as the new government, led by Donald Tusk (EPP), is critical of Wojciechowski’s aims.

In recent months, Tusk’s government and his PiS party have criticised Wojciechowski for not delivering on the farmers’ demands and for his past support for the Green Deal. 

Wojciechowski rejected the criticism, vindicating his role in pushing the CAP revision package and providing safeguards for EU farmers in extending trade benefits to Ukraine, a highly sensitive issue in Poland.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also officially reprimanded him for publicly expressing his dissent on the Ukraine issue.

He admitted to Euractiv that he had different views from von der Leyen at some points but did not want to expand further.

Preparing for Ukraine’s accession

Wojciechowski said that the Commission wants Ukraine to join the bloc politically, but he recalled that Kyiv’s accession would challenge the EU market, given its vast agricultural potential.

Thus, he called for long transition periods and security mechanisms to prevent the influx of Ukrainian commodities from destabilising the EU market, adding that the country can join the common market only when the appropriate conditions are created.

He also said the CAP should be reformed with a compulsory “capping” of the hectare-based support to farmers so that hectare-sized agricultural holdings in Ukraine do not receive too much compared to small farms in the EU.

“Those holdings should be excluded from the payments. The farmers, not the big companies, should get the money.”

Future CAP 

Wojciechowski said the farmers’ protests were a positive impulse for the European Commission to change its approach to agriculture.

The agricultural policy should be guided by a “4S” rule, involving security, stability, sustainability and solidarity of the food sector, Wojciechowski said, calling for a larger CAP and agricultural crisis budget.

He insisted that the CAP budget must grow to secure food production. “Our budget is far too small at the moment,” he said. Wojciechowski added to secure the farms’ stability, “We need at least a 50% increase of the budget and a 500% increase of the [€450 million annual] crisis reserve.”

Solidarity, on the other hand, involves supporting farmers’ organisations and associations of producers against the big players in the food chain.

To this aim, Wojciechowski calls for creating a farmers’ representative, both at an EU level and national level. Finland has already established such an office, and other countries should follow suit.

[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro/Alice Taylor]

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