Vol. 424 No. 9
114 Mr. Yates asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food, in the context of the EC Agricultural Commissioner's many statements to the effect that the Common Agricultural Policy previously gave 80 per cent of the benefits of Common Agricultural Policy resources to 20 per cent of Europe's farmers, the corresponding ratio arising from the Common Agricultural Policy reform decisions.
In its Communication of 1 February 1991, the EC Commission set out its reflections on the present state of the Common Agricultural Policy and on the need for fundamental change. Many deficiencies in the policy were outlined including the area of income support, which under the original Common Agricultural Policy mechanisms depended almost exclusively on price guarantees. Consequently incomes were largely proportionate to the volume of production and the greater part of support was concentrated on the largest and most intensive farms. The effect of this, as described in the Commission's paper, was that 80 per cent of the support provided by FEOGA was devoted to 20 per cent of farms, which accounted also for the greater part of the land used in EC agriculture. The existing system did not take adequate account of the incomes of the vast majority of small and medium size family farms. Against the background of this analysis and other reflections, the Commission subsequently suggested new guidelines for future policy. Amongst these the Commission recognised that farmers should be compensated for lower prices, that there should be advantage in doing this in a manner which would reduce production and reflect greater concern for the environment, and that there should be a better distribution of support among farmers, taking into account the difficulties of some categories and regions.
Agreement on this package of measures was reached at the end of last May. At the present time work is ongoing at Community level to give detailed effect to these wideranging revisions of the Common Agricultural Policy, which will be introduced in stages and will not be fully operative until 1997. Until the reformed policy is brought into full effect, it will not be possible to estimate the corresponding ratio as requested. However, it is clear that some of the changes made by the Council, including the removal of some limits on compensation, reduced or removed some of the redistributive effects of the original Commission proposals.
