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| Teresa Bellanova |
BRUSSELS - Mipaaf-Agrifish, Bellanova: the CAP takes into account the diversity of European agriculture. Green architecture is fine, but without technical-administrative complications for our farmers. “The CAP is and must remain a common policy but European agriculture is different, and it is precisely on this diversity that the European agricultural model bases its wealth. We must give legal certainty to farmers and we must do it as soon as possible! ".
Minister Teresa Bellanova said this this morning, speaking at the Agrifish Council underway in Brussels. The green architecture of the CAP, the flexible use of modulation possibilities for direct payments and administrative simplification are on the agenda.
"The green architecture of the CAP, through reinforced conditionality, eco-schemes and agro-environmental interventions, is an adequate tool for achieving environmental objectives, but I want to be sure that all this does not translate into further technical-administrative complications ”, Reiterated Minister Bellanova. "For this reason, I am not very convinced of the usefulness of providing a minimum percentage of resources for eco-schemes defined a priori in the regulation. Rather, maximum flexibility and subsidiarity must be ensured to the Member States, both in terms of resources to be allocated to such interventions and in terms of commitments to be requested from farmers ”.
The Minister welcomed the Presidency's proposal with the possibility, in the first years of application, to allocate unspent funds for eco-schemes to other direct payment interventions, but added that on the basis of the results obtained in this first phase, "an interim evaluation could be envisaged, to decide whether to make a certain level of financial allocation mandatory, always accompanied by a mechanism for recovering any unused funds".
As for the hypothesis of the flexible use of modulation possibilities for direct payments, Bellanova was one of the topics in the discussion paper proposed by the German Presidency, while considering some elements of flexibility introduced by the Presidency to be very useful, such as the definition of "true and precisely ”and the simplified system for small farmers, stressed that further steps are needed before reaching an agreement.
The Minister then indicated the need, in terms of risk management, to strengthen the tools available especially in the face of damage caused by natural disasters, such as floods, droughts, phytosanitary emergencies.
On this point Bellanova proposed that “Member States, on a voluntary basis, may decide to retain a small percentage of the national ceiling for direct payments to feed a public-private mutual fund that can intervene in the event of catastrophic events. We will send a written proposal on this point ”.
As for administrative simplification, Italy reiterated the need for further steps forward on the New Delivery Model "to make it more adaptable to local realities", and above all that within the National Strategic Plan "the Regional Management Authorities can fully implement autonomy for interventions relating to rural development ".
Finally, concluding her speech, the Minister argued that it is necessary to make the mechanism for defining the amounts of unit contributions and the relative variations more flexible, to be considered as indicative amounts for all the interventions envisaged in the Strategic Plan.