Common Agricultural Policy

2022 marked the 60th anniversary of the EU’s common agricultural policy. At sixty, the EU’s CAP supports an open market for Europe’s agri-food products, providing high-quality and affordable food to citizens. Over the past decade, the CAP became an important tool to support farmers in successfully tackling climate change and the sustainable management of natural resources.

FEFAC welcomes the overall orientation in the CAP Communication to favour more sustainable and environmentally-friendly farming methods, which will enable farmers to meet the commitments to the UN Sustainable Developments Goals, the COP21 climate change objectives and the European Green Deal. However, before any regulation takes place a proper impact assessment should be carried out.

The Common agricultural policy (CAP) reform  aims to encourage diversity of EU agricultural systems at the Member State level via National Strategic Plans in order to increase further their resilience. The general approach is more than welcomed, providing additional flexibility for more targeted measures at the national level, however, the risk of renationalization of certain CAP elements should be minimized in order to preserve the functioning of the Single Market. The CAP must  continue to remain a Common policy, in order to ensure Farmer’s decent income while providing consumers with safe, sustainable and affordable food.

FEFAC believes that the CAP creates the appropriate framework, enhancing the sustainability and competitiveness of the EU livestock sector by:

a.  Maintaining a stable and predictable legal framework & improve policy coherence between CAP and other relevant EU policies, including Free Trade Agreements

b.  Enhancing the competitiveness of EU plant protein production based on the recommendation of the EU Protein Plan

c.  Maintaining open market access to imported vegetable proteins, in particular for concentrated sources of protein (HiPro)

d.  Stimulating research and innovation at a pre-competitive level, together with dissemination of knowledge to achieve CAP & Climate change policy goals

f.   Improving the resilience for livestock farmers to manage their financial risk in crisis situations 

g.  Further developing and opening access to export markets for products of animal origin, as a source of growth and jobs in the EU feed & livestock sector