Plenary (December 2020)

In the context of the future EU multiannual budget, the European Commission put forward a proposal on the financing, management and monitoring of EU farm policy on 1 June 2018, as part of a CAP reform package of three legislative proposals. Since then, discussions have highlighted the need to maintain at least the current level of agricultural expenditure, as well as to simplify the procedures while adapting them to the future CAP delivery model. The CAP proposals are scheduled for debate and vote during the October II plenary session.

On 31 October 2019, the European Commission adopted a legislative package aimed at ensuring the continuation of the current common agricultural policy (CAP) until the legislation on the post 2020 CAP is in force. The package includes a proposal for a CAP transitional regulation setting out a number of adjustments to current CAP regulations, concerning their applicability beyond 2020 with new financial allocations. This proposal introduces transitional provisions and amendments that are necessary to ensure the continuity of the CAP through a one year transitional period ending on 31 December 2021 and to smooth the passage to the new policy framework envisaged by the post 2020 CAP proposals. It concerns all the basic acts which regulate how the CAP now works. Second edition. The 'EU Legislation in Progress' briefings are updated at key stages throughout the legislative procedure.

The 'amending regulation' is part of a set of three legislative proposals presented by the European Commission with the aim of reshaping and modernising the EU's common agricultural policy (CAP) for 2021 to 2027. It introduces changes to five regulations, including regarding the single common market organisation (CMO). Based on the work of the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) during the previous legislative term, Parliament is expected to debate the framework during the October II plenary session and adopt its position for negotiations with the Council.

For the first time in the history of the common agricultural policy (CAP), it is proposed that interventions available under the CAP's Pillar I (namely agricultural income and market support) and Pillar II (rural development) will be combined in one strategic plan for all CAP expenditure. This paper aims to provide a better understanding and insight into the European Commission's proposal for this new delivery model for the CAP after 2020. Under the Commission's proposal, greater flexibility would be given to Member States to decide on how best to meet general and specific objectives of the CAP. They would be responsible for drawing up a CAP strategic plan, in which they will set targets to be achieved over the subsequent programming period.

This paper dives into the world of policy discourses to assess the extent to which the European agencies’ discourse of the post-2020 Common Agricultural Policy incorporates the innovative impulses presented in the Common Food Policy proposal of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES food). The discourse analysis performed on European Commission and IPES food documents, showed fundamentally different foci and goals, proposed actions and understanding of the concept of sustainability. However, although the differences between the two discourses are still very large, the analysis points out that some features of the IPES food discourse are starting to become part of that of the European Commission.

This study shows that structural funds available under the CAP clearly provided an investment incentive for farms. The conclusion from the assessment of changes in the availability of productive inputs is that the beneficiaries reported a greater increase in fixed asset value and in farm area in all countries except for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The comparative analysis of countries covered by this study failed to clearly confirm that labor is substituted with capital to a significant extent. Every country covered by this study experienced a noticeable negative net effect on both the productivity and profitability of capital.

The aim of this paper is to determine the influence of the Common Agricultural Policy’s (CAP) subsidies on the level of economic sustainability of farms by means of three-fold study. To determine the economic sustainability of farms the authors applied the income gap ratio. Next, the level of income differentiation between farms of various economic classes was established. The last part consisted of the recognition of statistically significant CAP schemes that shape agricultural income in farms of different size and in assessing how the respective subsidies should increase or decrease to fill the recognized gap, based on the coefficients of panel regression.

Making agriculture sustainable is a global challenge. In the European Union (EU), the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is failing with respect to biodiversity, climate, soil, land degradation as well as socio‐economic challenges. The European Commission's proposal for a CAP post‐2020 provides a scope for enhanced sustainability. However, it also allows Member States to choose low‐ambition implementation pathways. It therefore remains essential to address citizens' demands for sustainable agriculture and rectify systemic weaknesses in the CAP, using the full breadth of available scientific evidence and knowledge.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) is one of the world's largest agricultural policies and the EU's longest-prevailing one. Originally focused mostly on supporting production and farm income, the CAP has progressively integrated instruments to support the environment. Nonetheless, there is considerable agreement among EU citizens that the CAP still does not do enough to address ongoing environmental degradation and climate change (92% of nonfarmers, 64% of farmers) (1). In May and June 2018, the European Commission (EC) published the financial plan and legislative proposal for the CAP post-2020 (2), prompting numerous proposed amendments that the newly elected European Parliament (EP) will now have to consider.

This article examines these national choices in terms of the discontinuity they impose on the centralized policy model, showing that they reduced the policy inertia associated to the historical processes in place at the EU level, along a new national path dependency re‐shaping the CAP implementation. The flexibility introduced by the 2014–20 reform was particularly embraced by Member States that had been penalized by the ‘one‐size‐fits‐all’ historical archetype.