Commissioner Cioloş: "The Common Agriculture Policy has never been written in stone"
Commissioner for EU Agriculture Dacian Cioloş attended the Oxford Farming Conference, talking about the challenges and opportunities of European agriculture beyond 2013.
"The Common Agriculture Policy has never been written in stone – it is a living policy, which has changed enormously over the past 25 years. These changes have already fundamentally altered the relationship between farmers, Governments and markets. Well over 90% of European agricultural payments are decoupled from production. In 2010, export subsidies were well under 1% of the CAP budget. It is the markets which are now the key driver in production decisions, not European subsidies. So there has been a fundamental shift in the CAP to make it market sensitive. We must now build on this, so that the CAP stays in tune with changing times and responds to new challenges" stated the EU commissioner .
Dacian Cioloş underlined that at the end of the current reform process of the CAP, this policy needs to be well equipped to address the challenges of food security and climate change, to preserve natural resources and to maintain territorial balance across Europe. (read the full speech)
During his stay in the UK, he visited two farms and attended a meeting of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (BirdLife UK). "My vision is that European agriculture in the European Union becomes a champion of sustainability in all its types of farming existing in the EU, as a reflection of EU's territorial and cultural diversity. For competitiveness is only worth it, in my opinion, if it includes also awareness of and respect for the environment and natural resources", stated Cioloş.
