European Union: what the much-criticized CAP reform contains

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The European Union (EU) detailed its proposal for reforming the future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from 2028 to 2034 on Thursday, July 17, sparking anger among the industry. As with the rest of the budget, two years of tense negotiations will begin with the member states and the European Parliament before the text is finalized.

• Change in the budget envelope

The European Union has promised to "secure" €300 billion in income support for farmers in the upcoming budget. Until now, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has provided €387 billion over seven years , from 2021 to 2027, including €270 billion in direct support to farms, and was the EU's largest spending item.

Agricultural unions and European parliamentarians are therefore denouncing a 20% cut in the overall budget, a "provocation" and a "black" day for agriculture. The Commission disputes this and presents the 300 billion as a "minimum," which states will be able to supplement with other European funds. Brussels is proposing a vast overhaul of the budgetary architecture, integrating the CAP into a large "regional and national partnership" fund and transferring certain sums—support for disadvantaged rural regions and agricultural innovation—to cohesion policy.

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The 300 billion will be a base with a flexible additional portion, a European diplomat also maintains, anonymously, refuting the 20% budget cut. Except that it would be up to governments to decide whether the additional sum goes to farmers or is allocated to other priorities.

Without going into details, the Commission is pushing Member States to finance, from European funds, an "agricultural relief" service which would allow farmers to be replaced in the event of illness, birth, vacation or training.

The European Commission wants to reform CAP payments to better target farmers who need them most, as recommended in a September report. The executive hopes to change the current method of calculation, which is largely based on farm size.

The Commission proposes making "per-hectare aid" degressive, with a maximum ceiling of €100,000. It also emphasizes the additional support it would like to provide for the establishment of young farmers. Per-hectare aid has been opposed for years by environmental organizations, which consider it a gift to "factory farms." In the European Parliament, the Left and the Greens are also pushing for a cap system.

But the issue remains a hot topic. And a European official acknowledges that it will be difficult to bring this reform to fruition, due to opposition from member states and the largest farmers. The main agricultural unions regularly emphasize that per-hectare subsidies offer predictability to farmers, based on the fixed amounts that the CAP can guarantee them.

In the wake of the concessions granted to farmers during the 2024 agricultural protests , Brussels is also promising to simplify the conditioning of CAP payments on compliance with environmental rules. Without abandoning environmental conditionalities, some of them would be transformed into incentives, in order to reward virtuous behavior rather than punish, according to a European diplomat. The Commission explains that it is learning lessons from the protests of a year and a half ago .

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