As finances talks ramped up, so did the resistance.
Farm lobbyists mobilized. Agriculture ministers revolted. The Fee’s personal agriculture chief, Christophe Hansen, started pushing again internally. Germany’s governing Christian Democrats wrote to Fee President Ursula von der Leyen, who hails from the occasion, urging their “Expensive Ursula” to not fold the farm finances into broader spending plans.
“Cuts to the Widespread Agricultural Coverage would ship out fully the improper sign,” Johannes Steiniger, one of many authors of the letter, instructed POLITICO. “The CAP should proceed to have an unbiased and dependable finances.”
The aim had been to essentially reshape how the farm finances labored. However in the long run, the following CAP will look very similar to the present one, with its primary construction left intact.
By June, the Fee had quietly shelved the restructuring plan. Jan Olbrycht, a particular adviser to Price range Commissioner Piotr Serafin, mentioned the CAP would stay as a separate pillar within the EU’s 2028-2034 finances. Rural growth funding would keep throughout the CAP’s two-pillar construction. Earlier concepts to shift that cash to the cohesion rubric had been, Olbrycht mentioned, “over, completed.”
That marked a significant retreat earlier than the official unveiling of the Fee’s finances proposal on July 16. And it has underscored the uncooked political energy the farm foyer can nonetheless exert in Brussels, even because the variety of farmers declines and the EU faces rising calls to redirect cash towards strategic challenges.
