LUXEMBOURG — European Union agriculture ministers put their collective foot down on Tuesday in an attempt to shield the next farm budget from a significant overhaul.

All but one of the bloc’s 27 member countries signed off on a set of conclusions — led by the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the EU — that assert the “strategic importance” of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as the European Commission prepares a proposal for the next fiscal term starting in 2028.

Only Romania objected — but that had more to do with a long-standing complaint that farmers in Western Europe tend to get higher EU subsidies than their counterparts further east.

The current CAP foresees outlays of €387 billion in the seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) that runs to 2027. That represents more than a third of the overall EU budget — money that critics say preserves the status quo but fails to address the broader, and growing, economic challenges that the bloc faces.

Now, the EU executive appears to be toying with the idea of merging the CAP and some 530 other programs into a single national cash pot that would in turn determine spending on sectors ranging from farm subsidies to social housing. Payouts could then be made conditional on countries carrying out certain reforms, such as promoting organic farming, according to ideas being mooted in Brussels.

Without mentioning specific financial expectations, the agriculture ministers made clear in their conclusions that the EU farm budget “should continue to exist” and should remain an “independent” policy in the distribution of agricultural subsidies, according to the text.

“We made these points for a reason,” Hungarian Agriculture Minister István Nagy told a press conference after a two-day meeting of the AGRIFISH Council in Luxembourg.

“We want to avoid any thinking, any proposal that would take away the dedicated nature of the Common Agricultural Policy,” he said. “If the support and financing of this activity comes into question and can be changed quickly, then food security and farmers’ livelihoods will be damaged.”

Spanish farm chief Luis Planas issued a similar warning on Monday before the ministerial meeting: “If anyone thinks that we can skip the CAP and put everything into one big package, in my opinion, they are wrong,” he said.

Those remarks were welcomed by outgoing Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, who opposed the idea of linking farm subsidies to conditions outside the scope of agriculture.

“I’m very much in favor of this approach which we have now where the Common Agricultural Policy is not conditioned by the other issues,” the commissioner said.

Territorial operation

Ministers fear that they may lose their grip on the policy process after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the outcomes of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture — a stakeholder dialogue she convened this year — would feed into a policy roadmap that she wants to unveil in the first 100 days of her new mandate.

The 29 organizations that participated in the strategic dialogue included farm lobbies, environmental organizations, retailers, food companies and others — and they unanimously agreed on a catalogue of agri-food policy measures.

Based on this, ministers took the opportunity to “remind” the Commission in their conclusions that political decisions on the future CAP are the responsibility of ministers and EU lawmakers.

“We would also like to see it [the CAP] remain within the legislators’ remit throughout,” Nagy said, adding that that ministers were concerned that the farm budget will be used to “finance other objectives.” Ministers “don’t want to end up imposing green ideological pressures” on the agricultural sector, the Hungarian farm chief added.

The conclusions also call for the post-2027 CAP to scrap much of the red tape that has been a source of frustration for farmers and authorities alike. They also call to strengthen the position of farmers vis-à-vis retailers and other actors in the value chain, and to ensure that climate and nature conservation objectives do not trump farmers’ economic interests. 

Divergent interests

But there’s a caveat.

Ministers from only 26 of the EU’s 27 countries approved the final text, preventing it from being adopted as the Council’s official position, but instead as the conclusions of the Hungarian EU presidency.

As a result, the text carries less political weight and is more akin to an offer of “moral support,” as one diplomat put it.

After two days of intense negotiations, Romania maintained its opposition to the conclusions in light of the long-standing issue of unequal distribution of farm subsidies among member countries. 

This is particularly true for farmers in several Baltic and Central European countries that joined the EU in 2004 or later and receive lower payments on the assumption that it costs them less to produce food.

Today, for example, Latvian and Lithuanian farmers receive only about 80 percent of the EU average in direct payments, even though their governments argue that their production costs have risen due to inflation and other factors.

A group of countries including Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia issued a joint declaration on Monday, obtained by POLITICO, which asserted that lower production costs were no longer a reality for their farmers, “while high standards and requirements under the CAP are the same for all farmers in the EU.”

But equalizing direct payments across the EU has proven to be a tricky discussion, with established members such as Italy resisting because they would have to give up some of their share of the budget.

While other countries pushing for external convergence eventually accepted a compromise proposed by the Hungarians, Romania held out.

Bucharest’s hard line on the issue also prevented the Belgian presidency from successfully pushing through broader Council conclusions on the future of agriculture earlier this year.