7-9 November Conference on rural development

Date: 14/11/1996

THE Common Agricultural Policy would undergo progressive reform, sector by sector, to facilitate the restructuring and simplification of rural development plans and create a single, integrated, multi-sectoral framework policy incorporating all types of existing funds, said Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler. As agriculture and forestry no longer dominate the EU economy, market support would gradually be dismantled in favour of direct payments, often dependent on the provision of non-agricultural services, said Fischler. Under a new framework, all rural areas will be eligible for aid and each region will develop a more coordinated multi-sectoral 'business plan', with funds allocated to each of the sectors.

GUY Legras, Commission director-general for agriculture, suggested that payments would become more decoupled from production, 'modulation' would have to be considered along with 'cross-compliance', a reexamination of production techniques, multi-annual price setting, and ways of improving cooperation between the Parliament and the Council of Ministers.

THERE was no clarity on how financing would be distributed in future. Within rural development policy, Fischler envisaged more co-financing and involvement from the private sector. He accepted that it was becoming increasingly difficult to justify compensation payments for the 1992 reforms and believed public opinion would support the funding of development and environmental measures.

The Cork Declaration A Living Countryside stated that sustainable rural development must be at the top of the EU agenda and become the fundamental principle underpinning all rural policy now and after enlargement. Rural development policy must be multi-disciplinary in concept, multi-sectoral in application, using co-financing and an integrated approach in all EU rural areas. The declaration stated that support for diversification of economic/social activity must focus on providing a framework for self-sustaining private and community-based initiatives. It defined sustainability as the preservation of quality and amenity of the rural landscape and stressed the need to apply the principle of subsidiarity and decentralisation of policy with a participative “bottom-up” approach. It said legislation on rural policy needed radical simplification, but there must be no renationalisation of the CAP. The application of rural development projects must be integrated into one single programme per region. Local financial resources must be encouraged to promote rural development with improved synergy between public and private funding. It stressed the need for improved networking, communication, partnership and exchange of experience at management level and called for monitoring, evaluation and bene-ficiary assessment to be reinforced.

FISCHLER said Cork would be the “springboard for a new dynamic policy”, adding that the EU had “erected the scaffolding” for future work. He will present the Cork Declaration to the Commission, to agriculture ministers on 18 November, and to the Parliament and Committee of the Regions. Irish Farm Minister Ivan Yates wants the declaration incorporated into the Dublin summit conclusions, and the Commission will present concrete rural development proposals in the second half of 1997.