The European Parliament legislative adopted by 425 votes to 130, to 33 abstentions, a resolution on the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulations (EU) 2021/2115 and (EU) 2021/2116 as regards good agricultural and environmental condition standards, schemes for climate, environment and animal welfare, amendments to CAP Strategic Plans, review of CAP Strategic Plans and exemptions from controls and penalties.
The European Parliament adopted its position at first reading in the framework of the ordinary legislative procedure taking over the Commission proposal.
In line with its commitment to reduce the administrative burden on EU farmers, the European Commission is proposing to make targeted adjustments to the regulations on the CAP's strategic plans in order to remedy certain difficulties in their implementation.
The review of the CAP changes the rules relating to certain environmental conditions with which farmers must comply in order to receive funding. The review covers the following points:
- allowing Member States to grant temporary and targeted derogations from certain cross-compliance requirements in the light of increasingly unpredictable weather conditions which may prevent farmers from complying with requirements, such as deadlines in a given year;
- authorising Member States to grant specific derogations from standards 5, 6, 7 and 9 on Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) covering situations where there is a risk that the requirements run counter to their objectives, for example because of particular agronomic situations for certain crops on specific soil types and soil and climatic conditions or because of damage to permanent grassland due to wild animals or invasive species,
- removing from GAEC standard 8 the obligation to devote a share of arable land to non-productive areas and features, while maintaining the protection of existing landscape features. Farmers will no longer be obliged to devote a minimum proportion of their arable land to non-productive areas such as set-aside. Instead, they should choose, on a voluntary basis, to retain a proportion of their non-productive arable land - or to establish new landscape features (such as hedges or trees) - and thus benefit from additional financial support through an eco-scheme that all Member States will have to propose in their CAP strategic plans;
- maintaining crop rotation (GAEC standard 7), but allow Member States to add the possibility of meeting this requirement through crop diversification;
- increasing the number of requests for changes to the CAP Strategic Plan, which a Member State may submit to two per year (up from the current one per year);
- exempting small farmers having no more than 10 hectares of agricultural areas from conditionality controls and penalties.