Today the European Commission (EC) within the health check of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has officially come out with proposals for expected legislation, which in its current wording do not envisage an adequate solution of the issue most important for Latvia revision of criteria for distribution of direct payments, and the Commissions proposal is to maintain in force the criteria applied until now historical criteria for distribution of finances.
If a family is feeding one child three times less than the other children then any pediatrician would certainly notice it at once but unfortunately in the co-called health check the Commission pretends as if not noticing the existence of obvious and market distorting differences between the direct payments, which farmers of many Member States receive from the EU common budget. Even more! The proposal of the Commission without any objective criteria to simply transfer money from a generous direct payments received by old Member States to rural development programs can be compared with administering of a medicinal cocktail to a patient and not the health check, says the Minister of Agriculture Mr. Mārtiņš Roze.
Latvias position in this issue has not changed, and Mr. Mārtiņš Roze, the Minister of Agriculture of Latvia is expressing his discontent with decisions of the European Commission not only in respect of distribution criteria of direct payments but also with modulation principles (transfer of finances from direct payments to rural development measures), single area payment scheme (SAP) and single payment scheme (SP).
Latvia believes that also in the future CAP has to be one of the main EU Common policies but it must be fundamentally revised. One of the major objectives of such revision is to solve a question of new and justified support eligibility criteria for distribution of financing in the future both for direct payments and rural development.
A further allocation of payments on the basis of historical approach is not acceptable for Latvia as it is does not correspond to the objective of a competitive and market oriented agriculture development as well as promotion of a balanced development of rural territories and a genuine growth of economic viability all over the European Union.
The current historical distribution criteria (for example, productivity, areas, number of animals, etc.) have become obsolete and do not correspond to situation of the day when the EU constitutes 27 Member States. Whereas the coupled and excessive area based payments make land market too expensive and in point of fact hinder setting up of competitive agricultural production units and the development in the European market domain.
Latvia is satisfied neither by voluntary nor mandatory modulation principles, t.i. when the financing received in the result of modulation is channeled to respective Member States. Latvia considers that the financing acquired in the result of modulation must serve as an instrument, equalizing differences among rural territories of the Community, and it could be achieved by applying criteria of partial distribution of the resources, based on objective and realistic needs. Latvia opposes EC proposal for legislation, providing that when new Member States start applying modulation (from 2012) then they have no right to pay complementary national direct payments.
Latvia still maintains its strong position that it is necessary to determine new and equal support eligibility conditions and criteria for distribution of financing in order to meet the new CAP challenges and to ensure a fair treatment for all the Member States. Therefore the Ministry of Agriculture will go on participating in discussions and looking for allies in other Member States in order to activate the issue on adjustment of payments after 2013.
It is important that these payments are based on clearly determined objective distribution criteria. Therefore even if it turns out impossible to increase payments for Latvia and other new Member States due to a flat position of the European Commission, we consider that in this case payments to other Member States must be adjusted appropriately, namely, reduced to the level of new Member States, says the Minister of Agriculture Mr. Mārtiņš Roze.
Additional information:
Aivars Lapiņš
Deputy State Secretary
mob. phone: +371 29227103
E-mail: aivars.lapins@zm.gov.lv
