Agriculture. The Common Agricultural Policy

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is designed to deliver a modern, sustainable and efficient agricultural sector in Europe. It aims to promote the competitiveness of the sector, to ensure an adequate and secure food supply and to preserve the environment and countryside while providing a fair standard of living for the agricultural community.

The new CAP maintains the two pillars, but increases the links between them, thus offering a more holistic and integrated approach to policy support. Specifically it introduces a new architecture of direct payments; better targeted, more equitable and greener, an enhanced safety net and strengthened rural development.

The CAP is financed by two funds, which form part of the EU's general budget:

  • the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF) finances direct payments to farmers and measures to respond to market disturbances, such as private or publiuc storage and export refunds, while
  • the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) finances the rural development programmes of the Member States.

The CAP is a genuinely European policy. Instead of operating 28 separate agriculture policies and budgets, Member States pool resources to operate a single European policy with a single European budget. This naturally means that the CAP accounts for a significant proportion of the EU budget.

The recent political agreement on CAP relates to four basic European Parliament and Council regulations  – i) on Direct Payments, ii) the Single Common Market Organisation (CMO), iii) Rural Development and, iv) a Horizontal Regulation for financing, managing and monitoring the CAP.

CAP reform objectives:

  • Enhanced competitiveness of EU agriculture
  • Improved sustainability
  • Greater effectiveness through more targeted and equitable direct payments

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is designed to deliver a modern, sustainable and efficient agricultural sector in Europe. It aims to promote the competitiveness of the sector, to ensure an adequate and secure food supply and to preserve the environment and countryside while providing a fair standard of living for the agricultural community.

 

The CAP is a genuinely European policy. Instead of operating 27 separate agriculture policies and budgets, Member States pool resources to operate a single European policy with a single European budget. This naturally means that the CAP accounts for a significant proportion of the EU budget.

 

The reformed CAP will promote smart, sustainable and inclusive growth by promoting resource efficiency in order to maintain the production base for food, feed and renewable energy across the whole EU; incentivising actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change, to protect ecosystems and fight biodiversity loss; and supporting diversification of economic activity in rural areas so as to promote balanced territorial development throughout Europe.

Status
running
Target Group
Organizations
Activities
Demonstration and investment activities
Subjects
Regional, urban and rural development
Source Regions
European Union
Source Countries
-
Eligible Regions
European Union
Eligible Countries
-
Grant Types
Cooperation, collaboration
Funding Bodies
-
Languages
Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Irish Gaelic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish
Support Types
-
Deadline Date
-
Programme
-
Managing Authority
Various Institutions across EU countries
About
-
Services
-
Legal Source
-
Supporting Programme
-
Resources
-
Refering Grants
2
Annual
yes

Focus

Since its creation, the CAP has always been adapted to respond to the challenges of its time. Significant reforms have been made in recent years, notably in 2003 and during the CAP Health check in 2008, to modernise the sector and make it more market-oriented. The Europe 2020 strategy offers a new perspective. In this context, through its response to the new economic, social, environmental, climate-related and technological challenges facing our society, the CAP can contribute more to developing intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth. The CAP must also take greater account of the wealth and diversity of agriculture in the EU Member States.


Since the role of the CAP is to provide a policy framework that supports and encourages producers to address these challenges while remaining coherent with other EU policies, this translates into three long-term CAP objectives: viable food production, sustainable management of natural resources and climate action and balanced territorial development.

 EU agriculture needs to attain higher levels of production of safe and quality food, while preserving the natural resources that agricultural productivity depends upon. This can only be achieved by a competitive and viable agricultural sector operating within a properly functioning supply chain and which contributes to the maintenance of a thriving rural economy. In addition, to achieve these long-term goals, better targeting of the available CAP budget will be needed. 


Duration

2014-2020


Proposal Submission

Implementation


The Pillar I and Pillar II funding is complemented by additional funding of EUR 17.1 billion consisting of EUR 5.1 billion for research and innovation, EUR 2.5 billion for food safety and EUR 2.8 billion for food support for the most deprived persons in other headings of the MFF, as well as of EUR 3.9 billion in a new reserve for crises in the agricultural sector and up to EUR 2.8 billion in the European Globalization Adjustment Fund outside the MFF, thus bringing the total budget to EUR 435.6 billion over the 2014-2020 period.

The only permanent CAP funding scheme which is centrally managed by the Commission is the scheme "Information measures relating to the Common Agricultural Policy".

Besides grants awarded following calls for proposals, the Agriculture and Rural Development Directorate-General also concludes public procurement contracts for the provision of services. These contracts are concluded following calls for tenders.

 


Terms And Conditions

Budget

Total CAP: 408, 31 billion EUR: Pillar I  - 312.74 billion, Pillar 2 - 95,58 billion in current prices 


Available Calls

Total Funding Amount
-

Selection Criteria

Selection criteria depends on a scheme of the program:

 

1. Direct payments

2. Market Management Mechanisms

3. Rural Development

4. Horizontal Regulations

 

Please refer to the program website for details.


Open To

Farmers among European Union.


Notes

 

 

New features of CAP:

  • joint provision of public and private goods
  • newtargeted and coherent. Pillar I covers direct payments and market measures providing a basic annual income support to EU farmers and support in case of specific market disturbances, while Pillar II covers rural development where Member States draw up and co-finance multiannual programmes under a common framework.

    Pillar II of the CAP will continue to deliver specific environmental public goods, improve the competitiveness of the agriculture and forestry sectors and promote the diversification of economic activity and quality of life in rural areas. Member States have flexibility in the design of the measures, based on specific national and regional needs but reflecting EU priorities. Measures in Pillar II are co-financed by Member States, which helps to ensure that the underlying objectives are accomplished and reinforces the leverage effect of rural development policy. Through higher co-financing rates for the poorer regions of the EU, Pillar II also contributes to the cohesion objectives of the EU.

    Within the two pillar structure, the design of the policy will be comprehensively modernised and simplified so as to deliver a fairer, greener policy, aligned with the Europe 2020 objectives.

    To maximise the synergies between rural development policy and the EU's other territorial development funds, the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) will be incorporated in the Partnership Contracts between the Commission and each Member State. These contracts will be linked to the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy and the National Reform Programmes. They will set out an integrated strategy for territorial development supported by all of the relevant EU structural funds, including rural development. They will include objectives based on agreed indicators, strategic investments and a number of conditionalities.

1. Direct Payments:

-The Basic Payment Scheme (BPS): Member States will dedicate up to 70% of their Direct Payments national envelope to the new Basic Payment Scheme – minus any amounts committed for additional payments (Young Farmer top-ups, and other options such as Less Favoured Area top-ups, the Redistributive Payment) and "coupled" payments. For the concerned EU-12, the end-date for the simpler, flat-rate Single Area Payments Scheme (SAPS) system will be extended until 2020.

External Convergence: The national envelopes for direct payments for each Member State will be progressively adjusted such that there is not such a wide gap between Member States in the average payment per hectare.

Internal Convergence: Those Member States that currently maintain allocations based on historical references must move towards more similar levels of the basic payment per hectare.

Member States also have the right to use a redistributive payment for the first hectares whereby they can take up to 30% of the national envelope and redistribute it to farmers on their first 30 hectares (or up to the average farm size in a Member State if higher than 30ha).

Reduction of the payment for large farms : Agreement has been reached on compulsory reduction of the payments for individual farms above 150 000€ ("degressivity").

Young Farmers: In order to encourage generational renewal, the Basic Payment awarded to new entrant Young Farmers (no more than 40 years of age) should be topped up by an additional payment available for a period of maximum 5 years (linked to the first installation).

Small Farmers Scheme: Optional for Member States, any farmer claiming support may decide to participate in the Small Farmers Scheme and thereby receive an annual payment fixed by the Member State of normally between 500 € and 1 250 €, regardless of the farm size.

Voluntary coupled support: In order to maintain current levels of production in sectors or regions where specific types of farming or sectors undergo difficulties and are important for economic and/or social and/or environmental reasons, Member States will have the option of providing limited amounts of "coupled" payments, i.e. a payment linked to a specific product

Areas with Natural Constraints (ANCs) /Less Favoured Areas (LFAs):

Greening

Transferring funds between Pillars:

“Active farmers”:

Eligible hectares

2. Market management mechanisms (Milk, Fruit Scheme, sugar quotas etc.)

3. Rural Development

National allocations

Co-funding rates: The maximum EU co-funding rates will be up to 85% in less developed regions, the outermost regions and the smaller Aegean islands, 75% in transition regions, 63% in other transition regions and 53% in other regions for most payments, but can be higher for the measures supporting knowledge transfer, cooperation, the establishment of producer groups and organisations and young farmer installation grants, as well as for LEADER projects and for spending related to the environment and climate change under various measures.

Thematic sub-programmes to pay especially detailed attention to issues such as young farmers, small farms, mountain areas, women in rural areas, climate change mitigation / adaptation, biodiversity and short supply chains. Higher support rates will be available within sub-programmes in some cases.

Measures will build on the strong points of measures available in the current period (innovation, knowledge, young farmers, small farmers, risk management, etc).

4. Horizontal Regulation

5. Further elements