I voted for the new CAP earlier this week because the compromises reached represent an important step forward to align the CAP with the Green Deal

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is negotiated every 7 years. It is the most important budget of the European Union with nearly 400 billion euros distributed to 9 million European farmers. The stakes are as important for maintaining decent incomes for farmers as they are for the success of the green transition in a context of climate crisis that is already impacting farmers while biodiversity continues to collapsing in Europe. A change is absolutely necessary. And the CAP that we have just passed will contribute to this. After this week's vote, which lasted 4 days and included more than 1350 amendments, I have summarized the changes won, but also sometimes lost, in the Parliament by answering a few key questions.

How is the CAP reform voted this week in the European Parliament greener than the current CAP?

The reform we have just voted includes several important changes that strengthen our ability to make structural changes. It redirects 100 billion euros towards a fairer and more sustainable agriculture while preserving our food sovereignty, which is essential if we want to deploy a more local and resilient agricultural model.

First of all, in the current CAP, 30% of direct payments (which fall under what is called "pillar 1" in CAP technical jargon) were paid if farmers respected three environmental criteria: crop rotation, maintenance of 5% of farmland dedicated to biodiversity, maintenance of permanent grassland on the farm. However, Member States currently have the possibility to derogate from this rule and can reduce the number of conditions to be met. As a result, the European Court of Auditors rightly criticizes the greening of the current CAP as being largely ineffective. From now on, with the European Parliament's proposal, all farmers will have to comply with the three conditions, without the possibility to derogate from them; this compulsory nature is a first step forward.

In addition to this, 30% of direct payments (pillar 1) are now conditional upon committing to biodiversity and climate-friendly farming practices, going beyond legal obligations (the so-called ecoschemes/eco-schemes, which represent 78 billion euros by 2027). This was the position of Environment Committee of the European Parliament. In other words, in order to receive the totality of his or her subsidies, a farmer will not only have to really respect existing good environmental practices (that are no longer optional), but also go further from them with additional environmental practices that cover actions such as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the storage of carbon in soils or practices that enhance biodiversity on farms, reduce pesticide consumption, protect pollinators... These payments will not be given in a block, each practice will be remunerated on the basis of its ambition, contrary to the current system that unlocks money far too easily and with environmental offsets that are too low. A points system and the control of the Commission, which will have to give its approval to the plans of the Member States, will ensure consistency and ambition.

Is this the only measure to ensure a greener CAP?

Not at all. In addition to this change, the vote in Parliament includes the alignment of national strategic plans with the Paris Agreement on Climate. This is a significant step forward because agriculture has a major role to play in the objective of climate neutrality.

In addition, two amendments, one from the Greens and the other tabled by myself, were adopted, compelling the European Commission to better integrate the Green Deal into the CAP. The first one gives the Commission the legal means to evaluate the consistency of all national plans with the ambitions of the Green Deal, and to ask Member States to review them in case they are deemed inconsistent. The other one asks the Commission to evaluate each national strategic plan, on the basis of the "Farm to Fork" and Biodiversity strategies. These strategies, adopted in the spring of 2020, set clear objectives: the reduction of pesticides by 50% by 2030, the transition to 25% of total farmland under organic farming by 2030, or the permanent preservation of 10%, on average in Europe, of farmland for the benefit of nature.

Finally, another amendment supported by a majority of the European Parliament calls for national strategic plans to be aligned with European climate and environmental legislation in force in 2025. The Climate Law and the new legislation on pesticides that will be in force by then will therefore be integrated into the national plans of each member state, which must imperatively respect them.

These are powerful tools to ensure that the different national strategic plans have the Green Deal, our climate and environmental objectives, as a core reference. And this is a great news because in the current CAP there is, for example, no objective to reduce pesticides. All this profoundly changes the current CAP.

In the end, the new rules of the game of the "core CAP”: pillar 1, and the agri-environmental actions under pillar 2 (the "greenest" pillar traditionally but also the smallest in terms of budget) will represent about 100 billion euros by 2027. This means that 10% of the entire European budget will be devoted to the ecological transition of agriculture.

Is this enough to guarantee a real alignment of the CAP with the Green deal?

Much will depend on how the Commission takes its responsibilities in the evaluation of the national strategic plans. The European Parliament will have given it the means to live up to the ambitions of the Green Deal, and to do its job well on climate coherence, on increasing organic farming, reducing pesticides or financing measures to improve animal welfare, to take just a few key examples.

NGOs criticize a lack of ambition at a time when the environment is deteriorating at an accelerated pace, why do you support this text?

A simple comparison with the current CAP shows the extent to which the reform voted by the European Parliament proposes a new pact to European farmers; they must be given the means to transform their practices and become allies in the ecological transition since they are also the first to be impacted by the consequences of climate change. With this ambitious and concrete reform, I am choosing irreversible transformations that are made for the benefit of farmers who will engage in transition and who will force others to move in that direction eventually. This is, I think, a proper theory of change. We will never make the agricultural transition without changing the rules of the game, but we will never make it against the farmers either!

A compromise amendment supported by the Renew Group limits the use of ecoschemes to 40% of the total of Pillar 1. Isn't it a problem to limit the ecological transition?

It was the EPP, the center-right group, that asked for this high limit and we accepted it in the compromise. Of course, if the trialogue negotiations can remove it, I would be happy to support it. Nevertheless, this concession is not essential. Why? Today, no State is considering reaching 40% of its direct payments in the form of ecoschemes. We are starting from 0% and the compromise reached in the Council on October 20 by the agriculture ministers sets the threshold at 20%. So, if this 40% ceiling remains, and if by 2027 when the next reform is negotiated, many Member States have reached it, it will mean that we will have won the greening of the CAP on a very large scale and that we will then be able to go from 40% to even higher. For the moment, this is a theoretical ceiling that does not block anyone.

Does this CAP allow us to do more for the development of organic agriculture?

Yes, today, payments for organic farming are made through conversion programs under Pillar 2, which is itself co-managed by regions. From now on, Pillar 1, by far the most important in budgetary terms, will be able to directly finance organic farming through eco-schemes that will pay for environmental practices that, as is the case with organic, reduce the negative impact of agriculture on water quality or reduce the use of pesticides.

Another advance on the subject is the obligation for member states to define in their strategic plan a target for increasing their organic farming area and a development plan for the organic sector. In addition to the amendments already mentioned in response to the first question, this obligation creates the concrete legal framework that allows the European Commission to assess how Member States are deploying the objective of 25% of the European farmland under organic farming by 2030.

Does this CAP reduce the use of pesticides in Europe?

In the definition of ecoschemes, we directly include the reduction of pesticides as an eligibility criterion for ecoscheme status.

Also, as I have already said, the Commission will examine the plans of each Member State in the light of the European objective of a 50% reduction of pesticides by 2030. This is a significant step forward because today the rules on plant protection products and their reduction are disconnected from the CAP. They lay in legislations such as the marketing authorization of these products or the "sustainable use of pesticides" directive. For the first time, the CAP is directly connected with the objective of pesticide reduction. This is also a very important step forward that the pesticide lobbies absolutely did not want!

Is this CAP fairer?

This CAP wants to limit the aid received by the largest farms. In concrete terms, a farm will no longer be able to receive more than 100,000 euros in direct payments per year from the CAP; these aids will start reducing gradually from 60,000 euros. The money capped may be eventually redistributed for smaller farms or for agri-environmental practices. In this way, we avoid the well-known CAP pitfall: contributing to the spread of large farms because of area-based subsidies. To complete this approach, we voted to initiate the transition from a payment logic based on the size of the farm to a logic based on the number of people working on it, in order to promote employment in rural areas. This translates into the payment of aid for the first hectares (the redistributive payment) based on the number of men and women present on the farm in order to combat the demographic decline among farmers.

Amendments preventing the fake division of a single person's property have also been passed. Today, these (unfortunately legal) practices allow the receipt of astronomical amount of money (more than 15 million euros per year!) by some landowners, who are farmers only in name. This is the practice that we have seen in some Eastern European countries and which has been rightly denounced by many media. With this reform proposed by the European Parliament, this will no longer be possible!

Finally, in order to prevent small farms from being "swallowed up" by these very large landowners, we voted to create a complaint mechanism managed by the European Union so that complaints against land grabbing can be filed by small farmers and studied outside the country where they occur, which takes on a special meaning in European countries where the rule of law is sometimes jeopardized.

Does this CAP reinforce the food sovereignty of the European Union?

The CAP already ensures food security of Europeans. This one goes further and provides the conditions for reducing our imports: the development of legumes, especially soybeans, and other proteins, which we currently import en masse. An amendment by the Environment Committee and another by Renew strengthen the financial support for the cultivation of leguminous crop in Europe, in line with the French Protein Plan. Similarly, the basic conditionnalities of the CAP, those that all farmers must respect, now require that crop rotation include the use of leguminous, which improves the quality of our soils, strengthens our plants, and thus reduces the need for chemical pesticides. This will increase our independence from protein exporting countries and strengthen the sector, and the jobs going with it.

Finally, it should be noted that the development of leguminous in Europe, particularly to feed livestock, will reduce the impact of our demand in the rest of the world, and will therefore help our fight against imported deforestation, particularly in the Amazon. Indeed, Europe is responsible for 10% of global deforestation. Obviously, further legislation will be needed to stop imported deforestation, and we are actively working on this right now in the Environment Committee.

Did you lose any battles in this reform?

Unfortunately, yes. For example, I regret that the Parliament was not able to adopt the strengthening of the implementation of the Nitrate Directive; indeed countries like the Netherlands, Denmark or Ireland do not comply with it because of far too intensive livestock farming, while the rest of Europe has largely complied with it over the last three decades. I, together with part of Renew, supported an amendment from the Greens that went in this direction but did not obtain a majority.

Similarly, I wanted to strengthen the indicators evaluating the reduction of pesticides, their use, their sales or the reduction in the number of animals per hectare in order to favour the smallest farms. But here again, no majority emerged and obviously I regret this.

Another lost battle: to set aside a fifth of the public money earmarked for the wine sector to carry out ecological measures, such as the phasing out glyphosate. Unfortunately, this addition by the Environment Committee did not find a majority in plenary. The lobbies are still powerful on this subject.

Are you aligned with the French position?

With the French government, we have had a common ambition for months: to have mandatory eco-schemes. Six months ago it was by far a minority position. And this is now the position of both the Council and the Parliament, even if the Parliament's position is more ambitious with 30% of Pillar 1 against 20% for the Council. We have also worked together on compliance with environmental conditions, measures in favor of proteins to strengthen our autonomy, etc. We have also worked together on the respect of environmental conditionalities. Overall, the Parliament is more ambitious than the Council in its reform of the CAP and I will be very careful that this ambition is not weakened during the final negotiations with the States. And I will be critical if this is the case!