Leinen eyes EU farm reforms

A senior MEP has promised that the European Parliament will use greater powers it receives in the planned reform treaty to overhaul the EU’s system of farm support.

German Socialist MEP Jo Leinen, chairman of the constitutional affairs committee, said that Parliament would use the new powers given by the revised treaty to decide jointly with the member states over agricultural policy, to influence planned reform of the farm support system. The reform treaty is expected to be agreed in October and to enter into force in 2009.

Leinen predicted that "a new agricultural policy will look very different to the old one". He highlighted subsidies for tobacco production as one area of EU policy MEPs would try to change.

The Portuguese presidency will start work on turning the broad outline for a treaty agreed by EU leaders in June into a legal text with the launch of a treaty-drafting intergovernmental conference (IGC) during the meeting of foreign ministers next Monday (23 July).

Under the EU constitution, which was rejected by French and Dutch voters and which the reform treaty seeks to replace, the powers of the European Parliament to agree legislation through co-decision would have been extended to many new policy areas, including agriculture. Until now, MEPs were only consulted on agricultural spending. The constitution also scrapped the traditional distinction between ‘compulsory expenditure’, including spending on farm support, which can be spent without MEPs’ approval, and ‘non-compulsory expenditure, on which MEPs have the last say.

These elements of the constitution were not challenged by member states in the run-up to the June summit and so will be kept in the reform treaty.

But it is far from certain that the European Parliament would be more enthusiastic about radical reform of the Common Agricultural Policy than EU governments are. Referring to resistance from members of Parliament’s agriculture committee to plans to modernise the EU’s wine sector by digging up low-quality vines, one European Commission official said: "Can you imagine trying to reform the wine sector under co-decision?"

MEPs on the committee generally try to defend support for farming. In addition to being critical of the Commission’s proposal to reform the wine sector, in particular of plans to scrap emergency distillation of low quality wine, MEPs recently threatened to withhold funds unless EU governments backtracked on plans to shift money away from direct support to farmers to rural development projects.

In Parliament as a whole, MEPs broadly support lower spending on farming, a shift in spending from farming to support for rural areas and more environmentally-friendly farming.

A senior MEP has promised that the European Parliament will use greater powers it receives in the planned reform treaty to overhaul the EU’s system of farm support.