Planned EU Farming Reforms Criticised for Weakening Environmental Regulations – vegconomist

New reforms proposed by the European Commission to reduce bureaucracy for farmers have been criticised due to their potential to weaken environmental regulations.

As reported by POLITICO, the reforms would reduce environmental controls on the disbursement of funds under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), while exempting smallholders from some checks and increasing the cap on subsidy payments to small farms.

Farmers must currently comply with land requirements known as GAECs to access certain subsidies, but the new policies would provide more flexibility in how they implement the rules. For example, the amount of grassland that can be lost would be increased from 5 to 10% compared to 2018, allowing farmers to increase production but negatively impacting biodiversity and carbon sequestration. The reforms would also change the definition of a “water course”, potentially meaning that fewer rivers would be protected from agricultural pollution.

Additionally, the plans would make it easier for EU countries to provide funding to farmers affected by climate change. However, it has been argued that they could worsen the climate crisis in the long term by weakening environmental regulations.

Compromising the Green Deal

Some commentators have suggested that the proposed regulations would jeopardise the European Green Deal, which aims to achieve net-zero emissions in the EU by 2050 and decouple economic growth from resource use. Some Green Deal policies have previously been scrapped due to backlash from farmers.

The new reforms have been developed following the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture, which was announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2023. The dialogue made a variety of policy recommendations, including incentives to help farmers adopt more sustainable and resilient practices.

Some of these were incorporated into Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen’s Vision for Agriculture and Food, published in February. However, this vision has been criticised for not going far enough; for example, it does not feature plans to reduce meat and dairy-heavy diets or reform VAT on food.

“The new EU vision for agriculture and food lacks a vision on how competition and climate targets can be perfectly combined […] to achieve the 2040 and 2050 climate targets,” said Jeroom Remmers, director of the TAPP Coalition, earlier this year.