The European Council announced today, March 26, that it will support a review of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAR), following a proposal by the European Commission.
The Council says that the aim of the review will be to ease the administrative burden and also give more “flexibility for complying with certain environmental conditionalities.”
Farmers have complained that they are facing pressures due to climate change, increasing costs, and inflation, which makes the economic impact of the certain elements of the CAR an unfair burden to implement.
The Commission has therefore decided to review the CAR to keep a better balance between “environment and climate ambition in the current CAR and ensuring that farmers’ concerns are addressed.”
The “Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC)” standards are at the heart of the review. The GAECs are nine standards that serve to support the environment and climate, which are conditional for farmers to comply with in order to receive support.
The Commission has decided to allow member states to “grant temporary and targeted derogations” from the conditions, particularly in the case of severe and “unforeseen” climate events, such as the floods that ravaged Greece’s Thessaly region in the autumn of 2023.
More details on the review can be found here.
