Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on decoupling progress

Starting with the 2003 reform, direct payments have progressively been decoupled from farmers' production decisions, thus improving market orientation and enhancing the competitiveness of EU agriculture. At the same time, certain limited possibilities for coupled support have been maintained for environmental and social reasons taking into account the need to smoothen the adjustment process and the role of agriculture in providing public goods by keeping sustainable farming in place throughout the EU.

The impact assessment accompanying the Health Check proposals analysed the impact of the 2003 reform and considered three options for further steps towards a more competitive agriculture: a) status quo; b) full decoupling; c) targeted selected decoupling. The analysis showed the benefits of staying on the path towards more market orientation, while also identifying risks in certain regions, in particular for the extensive suckler cow breeding and sheep meat sectors, for which it could be justified notably on environmental grounds to maintain partially coupled support. Such approach is reflected in the resulting Council Regulation.

The final Presidency compromise on Health Check proposals includes the following declaration: "The Commission declares that it will prepare a report by 31 December 2012 on the status of Health Check implementation in particular as regards progress on decoupling". What follows has the objective of fulfilling this commitment by factually presenting the latest decoupling steps and quantifying them in terms of relative share of direct payments.

EUR-Lex: COM(2013)617: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2013:617:FIN

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