The CAP reform: simple answers for complex challenges
After 2013, the Common Agricultural Policy will be simple both for administrations and farmers while being efficient in ensuring food security, a sustainable use of natural resources and a balanced development of all our rural areas, wrote Dacian Cioloş,Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development in a letter to the European ministers of Agriculture and to the Members of the Agriculture Committee of the European Parliament. In this document, the Commissioner underlines that the simplification aspects have been taken into account at all stages of the drafting process of the CAP reform proposals, not only streamlining the current instruments available today within the CAP to make its more targeted and more efficient – like cross compliance, management of rural development programmes, control systems etc. – but also the new tools proposed.
Among other new tools, a simple and specific scheme for small farmers will reduce the red tape linked to the management and control of direct support. Approximately 30% of beneficiaries (almost 2.3 million farms) will be eligible for this scheme. It foresees a major reduction in administrative burden for farmers and for public authorities. In addition, the green component of direct payments will provide a strong lever toward the sustainability of farming sector while applying measures easy to implement for farmers and easy to control for administration.
For more details please read the annex of the letter 
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