flashlight europe 06/2017: The EU´s Common Agricultural Policy. Why Reform is Overdue

Summary:

38% of the EU´s budget is spent on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Mindful of the enormous challenges of mass migration or the deteriorating security situation in and around the EU, at least a partial redirection of these funds is warranted.

Preparations for setting up the EU´s new budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework for the years 2021 to 2027, have started. In the past negotiations among Member States on the budget were highly contentious and showed the deep divide between those members which receive more money out of the budget than they pay in, and the so-called net contributors. One does not have to be a genius to predict that the coming negotiations will be even more contentious for at least two reasons.

First, with the United Kingdom exiting the EU, the second biggest net contributor in absolute terms after Germany will have left, tearing a hole of roughly €7 billion annually into the EU budget. Second, there will not only be less money available but heightened pressure to spend more money on the manifold new challenges confronting the EU. These challenges range from strengthening the euro area to digitalization and from mass migration to Islamist terrorism.

Accordingly, the EU is faced with the question of whether it still can afford to dedicate more than a third of its budget to subsidizing farmers who have over the last 60 years become a highly competitive economic sector, or if there are strong arguments to reform the CAP and redirect parts of its funds to add European value to spending on foreign and security policy, development, research and not least on migration.

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