Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Opening Statement
Aidan O’Driscoll, Secretary General
6 monthly report (July to December 2014) on developments in
the EU and CAP Simplification
12th May, 2015
Introduction
Thank you Chairman. I would like to thank the Committee for the
opportunity to address it today on EU developments in the
agriculture sector for the latter half of 2014. CAP simplification
was an issue that arose towards the end of that period and I will
cover this also in my opening statement.
You have in front of you the six monthly report on EU Developments
for the period July to December 2014, which shows the number of
dossiers progressed during the Italian Presidency.
Given the
significant EU Institutional changes in 2014, namely the European
Parliament elections and the appointment of the new Commission,
policy developments in the period in question were less than in other
years.
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Correction of text of report
Before I begin, I want to correct a typographical error on page 2 of
the report, relating to the Schools’ Schemes.
The Commission is
recorded in the report as seeking to ensure that aid rates for these
schemes would be set exclusively by the Council. In fact it is the
Council that is seeking this. The Commission’s proposal provided for
co-decision.
Climate and Agriculture
One of the most significant developments in the last six months of
2014 was the set of Conclusions adopted by the European Council on
climate change.
The Council acknowledged the low mitigation
potential in the agriculture and land use sector. It asked the
Commission to consider how best to encourage the sustainable
intensification of food production, while optimising the sector’s
contribution to greenhouse gas mitigation and sequestration,
including through afforestation. The detailed policy on how to
include land use and forestry in the 2030 framework will be agreed
before 2020. The inclusion of this text, largely drafted by Ireland,
was highly significant for future policy on agriculture, forestry and
climate change in the EU, particularly with regard to the 2030
emission reduction targets. It was the first time that EU leaders
acknowledged the specific challenges involved in ensuring coherence
between the EU’s food security and climate change objectives. This
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text also broadly reflects the views expressed when agriculture
ministers previously discussed this matter, again at the prompting of
Ireland.
Russian Ban on EU Agriculture Products
The impact of the Russian ban on EU agriculture products was
discussed at several Council meetings during the course of the
Italian Presidency. The dairy and fruit & vegetable sectors across
the EU were most affected by the ban and the Commission
introduced a number of market support measures to assist
producers in these sectors, including an aid to private storage
scheme that was extensively used by Irish operators.
A special
compensation package was introduced for dairy producers in the
Baltic States and Finland who were severely impacted by the ban.
The funding of these measures was an issue, with the Commission
proposing the use of the agriculture crisis reserve fund.
The
Commission subsequently withdrew its proposal following strong
objections from a number of Member States, including Ireland. We
took the view that EU farmers were disproportionately affected by
a decision that was taken from a political and security policy
perspective, and that, in these circumstances, expenditure should
not be confined to EU agriculture budget lines only.
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The EU Commission has continued to provide updates on the market
situation consequential to the ban and information on the measures
that they have taken to address the situation.
From an Irish perspective, our dairy and seafood sectors were most
affected but with significant impacts also on our pigmeat sector.
Until the imposition of the ban, Russia had been seen as a priority
market for growth of exports, with our agri-food exports having
increased exponentially (by some 460%) in the years leading up to
the ban.
Dairy Sector
The next main topic dominating discussions during the Italian
Presidency was the future of the Dairy Sector, in preparation for
the abolition of milk quotas in 2015. Ireland strongly supported the
abolition of the milk quota regime and along with other Member
States continued to call on the Commission to introduce support
measures to ensure a “soft landing”, to mitigate the impact of super
levy fines, in the run up to the expiry of milk quotas on 31st March
2015. Unfortunately, agreement between Member States could not
be reached and Irish dairy producers are now faced with a super
levy bill of approximately €69 million euro.
The Commission has
introduced a facility which will enable farmers to pay the super levy
bill in instalments. Department officials are currently finalising the
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implementation details and the Minister will make a further
announcement on this in due course.
Organics
As
to
legislative
dossiers,
the
Organics
dossier
has
been
comprehensively examined in 2014 during both the Greek and Italian
Presidencies. This is a proposal to revise the EU rules on organic
production with a view to generating further growth in the EU
organic sector and to reinforcing consumer confidence in the area.
This dossier has continued into 2015 under the Latvian Presidency.
It has re-examined the proposal at both political and technical level
and has produced a substantially revised text covering areas such as
the scope of the proposal, rules governing the conversion period, the
presence of unauthorised substances in organic products, the coexistence of organic and conventional farming on the same holding,
the import regime and controls. The Latvian Presidency hoped to
achieve a general approach at Council yesterday and, while good
progress was made, further meetings of the Council will be required
to secure agreement.
Other legislative dossiers discussed during the Italian Presidency
The Italian Presidency discussed a number of other legislative
proposals during their tenure, including: the four part animal and plant health package;
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 the School Fruit and Milk Scheme;
On the four part animal and plant health package, there was good
progress
on
the animal
health
dossier,
consolidates EU law on animal health.
which
updates
and
The Italian Presidency
secured a general approach from Council on this dossier and we
expect the successful conclusion of an agreement with the European
Parliament by the end of May. Work is continuing under the Latvian
Presidency on the Plant Health and Official Controls dossiers. Again
the objective of these proposals is to modernise and consolidate the
existing legislation in these areas. The fourth part of the package,
the Plant Reproductive Material proposal, was withdrawn by the
Commission for redrafting, following the European Parliament’s
rejection of it last year and no further progress has been made on
this proposal to date.
There was disagreement too within the Council on the proposal to
merge the rules covering the School Fruit and School Milk Schemes.
Further discussion on this dossier has been suspended pending the
outcome of the Commission’s evaluation of the state of play as part
of the CAP Simplification exercise.
Other issues
The Council also discussed ways of strengthening EU policies for
young farmers and the position regarding error rates in agriculture
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expenditure. The Council adopted a series of conclusions concerning
the latter while Presidency conclusions were adopted regarding the
former.
Agricultural Trade negotiations
There were a number of developments in trade negotiations in the
period covered by the report. Some of these negotiations including
those with Japan, The US and the MERCOSUR group of South
American countries are very important for EU and Irish agriculture
and I would be happy to provide the Committee with further
information on the current state of play. At present there is much
attention on the TTIP negotiations between the EU and US. The
ninth round of these negotiations took place last month and a tenth
round is scheduled for July. There are high-level commitments from
both sides to conclude substantive negotiations by the end of 2015;
however opinion is divided on whether this deadline will be met.
CAP Simplification
Turning to CAP simplification, the background is that, following his
appointment last November, EU Commission President Juncker set
simplification of the CAP as a priority for the incoming Agriculture
Commissioner, with an instruction that, in the first year, he should
concentrate on direct payments – greening in particular – rural
development, quality policy and the fruit and vegetables scheme.
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Thus, in January last Commissioner Hogan launched a screening
exercise, within the Commission, of agricultural legislation to
identify elements that could either be simplified or left to Member
States. The Commission initiative is ongoing and was guided by three
principles: Maintaining the basic political decisions taken under CAP
reform,
 No weakening of sound financial management or increase in
error rates and
 Prioritisation of areas of greatest concern to farmers and
other beneficiaries.
The Commission then wrote to all Member States inviting their
suggestions for CAP simplification. Over 500 pages of suggestions
were submitted by Member States and these are currently being
examined by the Commission.
The Latvian Presidency has pursued this initiative actively and has
scheduled a number of debates at the EU Council of Agriculture
Ministers. Yesterday the Council adopted a series of conclusions,
the main thrust of which are to identify the areas of the CAP most
in need of simplification and to maintain pressure on the Commission
to come up with simplification initiatives later this year to address
these issues.
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So much for the process; as to the content:
Ireland had contributed actively to the simplification initiative. We
have made a written submission to the Presidency and have
participated actively in the debates at Council. The main focus of
Ireland’s submission is to ensure stability, certainty and subsidiarity
in the application of the rules in place. This means ensuring that the
Commission does not issue revised interpretations with retroactive
effect or create new conditions and requirements, by way of
interpretative notes and implementing regulations, where no specific
provisions already exist. We have provided a number of examples of
specific instances where improvements could be made. These relate
to interpretations taken by the Commission on equivalent greening
measures, on the definition of catch crops and on the adjacency of
landscape features and buffer strips to land parcels. We have also
identified a number of elements in the Commission delegated and
implementing acts that should be simplified. These relate largely to
greening requirements and controls.
In particular we have drawn
attention to the disproportionate impact on smaller farmers of the
formula for deductions and sanctions for over-declarations and to
the complicated formula for reductions and penalties for breaches
of greening requirements.
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I would be happy to provide further detail to the Committee, if you
wish, and I understand that you already have received a copy of our
submission.
Our essential point is that the adoption of the
Commission delegated and implementing acts was rushed and the
outcome is a very complicated set of rules which is a prime candidate
for simplification.
We have also drawn attention to the need to streamline and simplify
the approval process for rural development programmes. This is an
extremely cumbersome and complicated process which is very
resource-intensive and can ultimately give rise to delays in
implementation of Rural Development Programmes. This is a key
issue for us.
We will continue to interact with the Commission and with other
Member States to ensure that our proposals are followed up. The
Commission has engaged positively in the process to date and
yesterday put forward a number of initial suggestions which we are
examining.
A number of Member States have called for a mid-term review by
2017 of the Basic legislation on the CAP. We are wary of such a
review so soon into the implementation process as we believe that it
would not be confined to simplification but would result in unpicking
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the CAP reform agreement reached in 2013, less than two years into
its implementation.
Nevertheless, there will be continued pressure to sort out anomalies
in this basic legislation and this could lead eventually to more wideranging CAP reform.
It should be remembered that the Commission had already made a
commitment to the European Parliament in April of last year that it
would have another look at the greening provisions after the first
year of implementation.
And of course the 2013 CAP reform
agreement already provides for an evaluation of the Ecological Focus
Area provisions by the end of March 2017. Moreover the current
multiannual financial framework for the EU budget will expire in
2020 and the debate on the MFF for the next period will inevitably
generate a discussion on the future of the CAP after 2020, either in
late 2017 or in 2018.
ENDS
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