The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development
adopted the report by Albert Deß (EPP, DE) on the proposal for
a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the
financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union and
amending Regulations (EU) No 1305/2013, (EU) No 1306/2013, (EU) No
1307/2013, (EU) No 1308/2013 and (EU) No 652/2014 of the European
Parliament and of the Council.
The committee recommended that the position of the
European Parliament at first reading following the ordinary
legislative procedure should amend the Commission proposal. The
main amendments aim to do the following:
- ensure legal certainty and harmonised and
non-discriminatory implementation of support to young
farmers,
- facilitate implementation of advisory and training
services by Member States´ Managing
Authorities;
- incentivise participation in quality schemes by
farmers or groups of farmers;
- make the sector-specific income stabilisation
tool more effective by allowing Member States to define, in
their rural development programmes, the income to be taken into
account for the activation of the tool, in a flexible manner. The
drop in income should exceed a threshold of at
least 20 %;
- provide effective assistance to emergency
operations undertaken by Member States in response to
catastrophic events and adverse climatic events;
- increase the maximum percentage of initial public
support from 65 % to 70 %, with a view to
increasing the use of crop, animal and plant insurance, and of
mutual funds and the income stabilisation tool;
- increase the threshold below which Member States may
decide not to pursue recovery of undue payments from EUR
150 to EUR 250 provided that the Member State applies an
equal or higher threshold for not pursuing national
debts;
- introduce a further derogation exempting small
farmers from declaring parcels on which a payment application
is not made;
- allow Member States to include certain shrubs or trees
which produce animal feed in permanent grassland where the
grasses and other herbaceous forage remain predominant, in the
whole or in part of their territory;
- clarify the classification prior to 2018 of
land lying fallow as arable land, where it had been in place
for five years or more, and provide certainty to the farmers
concerned, and allow Member States to maintain its classification
as arable land in 2018;
- grant Member States the opportunity to consider areas
suitable for pasture where grass and other herbaceous forage do not
predominate as permanent grassland in all or part of their
territory;
- allow Member States to review, on an annual basis,
their decisions on the reduction of the part of the basic payment
to be granted to farmers which is greater than EUR 150 000 provided
that this does not lead to a reduction in the amounts available for
rural development;
- enable Member States to tailor CAP assistance to
their specific needs by giving them the opportunity to review
their decision to transfer funds from their ceiling for direct
payments to their rural development programmes and vice versa
;
- simplify the rules applicable to greening
measures and improve their
consistency;
- streamline the existing exemptions from the crop
diversification obligation and the ecological focus area
obligation in Regulation (EU) No 1307/2013;
- facilitate the access of young farmers to the full
five years of payment for young farmers also in cases where
young farmers have not applied for support immediately after
setting up;
- grant Member States the possibility of deciding to
increase the percentage applied to calculate the amount of the
payment for young farmers in the range of 25 %
to 50 % and irrespective of the calculation method
applied;
- clarify the responsibilities of Member States
regarding the production limiting character of voluntary coupled
support and increase flexibility with regard to voluntary
coupled support;
- incentivise the use of written contracts in the
milk and milk products sector and improve contractual
clarity with regard to contracts for the delivery of raw
milk;
- clarify the role and tasks of producer organisations
and associations of producer organisations and their relation to competition law;
- strengthen the role of interbranch
organisations in view of the
important role they can play in enabling dialogue between actors in
the supply chain and promoting good practice and market
transparency.