11.03.2010
Stefan Tangermann (retired OECD Director for Trade and Agriculture, and Professor Emeritus, University of Göttingen) has written a powerful critique of the Single Farm Payment in Agra Europe. He concludes that 'Targeted payments to farmers providing specific public goods where they are needed are a much more convincing policy than general payments arguably justified by cross-compliance.'
11.03.2010
1789: the people of Paris take the Bastille. 1848: republican upheaval all across Europe. 1917: the Communists take power in Russia. 2010: the European Socialists & Democrats declare in a position paper that the CAP needs to be revolutionized.
25.02.2010
The recent joint position paper by BirdLife and the European Landowners’ Organization (ELO), presented on 27 January 2010, raises the question with whom environmentalists should ally for CAP reform.
20.02.2010
Forestry covers almost as much land as agriculture – but only 3% of the CAP budget is earmarked for forests. One would think that this imbalance would make forest owners long-standing critics of the CAP. Not so. For one thing, many forests are owned by the government, and governments won’t lobby against their own policy. More importantly, many forest owners also happen to be farmers, and the more powerful agricultural lobby has managed excessively well to subdue its smaller sibling in this close relationship.
19.02.2010
22 member states agreed on the Paris Declaration on December 10, 2009. They include all those that had supported the call for increased dairy support, sponsored by France and Germany this autumn – that is, they excluded the small reform-oriented camp (UK, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, plus Malta). The document is a concoction of buzz words and stereotypes that shall somehow prepare the emotional ground for the continuation of wasteful agricultural subsidies.
16.11.2009
Tax payers should not be forced to subsidize airlines that declare their in-flight meals as food exports. Nor should they have to finance economically absurd live cattle exports that are irreconcilable with animal welfare.
Michael Jäger, Secretary General of the Tax Payers Association of Europe (TAE), gives his opinions on the CAP.
12.11.2009
ECORYS Nederland BV, Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) and Institute for Economic Research (IFO), 2009
12.11.2009
Jean-Christophe Bureau and Louis-Pascal Mahé, Notre Europe, 2009
11.11.2009
The business community would like to shift EU funds from agricultural subsidies to research & development. But they only complain without acting. Really? Here are Charlotte Nyberg of the Swedish Chambers of Commerce and Helena Bergqvist of the Confederation for Swedish Enterprise who have set out to change the EU budget.
11.11.2009
Ariel Brunner from Bird Life International talks about worst and best practices in the EU's agrienvironmental payments. His concret examples show how much remains to be done to green the CAP.