Since I was appointed Minister on 9 March last, I have had bilateral meetings with my French, Spanish and Danish Ministerial colleagues. I have also had the opportunity to interact with my Ministerial colleagues from the 26 other Member States and the EU Commission at the three EU Council of Agriculture Ministers meetings held in Brussels and Luxemburg since I assumed office.
The meeting with my French counterpart, Bruno Le Maire, was devoted primarily to the reform of the CAP. We shared common ground on the strategic importance of agriculture both in Ireland and France. We agreed to work together to ensure that the reform of the CAP delivers an ambitious policy, adequately funded to reinforce and develop agriculture in the EU. We also agreed on a number of important markers in the CAP negotiations, namely
That the distribution of future direct income support within Member States should allow for the necessary flexibility of member states to take account of the agriculture and regional conditions which apply to that country and
That any future "greening" of the direct income support schemes should be simple to apply both for farmers and Member State administrations and should not entail additional costs for either.
The meeting with my French counterpart also dealt with the Mercosur negotiations and with the potential difficulties they could pose for the EU beef sector. The contribution which extensive EU beef production can make to the global fight against climate change was discussed and it was agreed that both countries would work together to highlight this.
While my meeting with my Spanish counterpart was devoted largely to fisheries matters, we did have the opportunity to exchange views on the broad parameters of the upcoming CAP negotiations.
Last week I met with the Danish Minister Henrik Høegh in Brussels and we discussed CAP and our forthcoming presidencies of the EU. Minister Høegh intends to make good progress with the CAP reform negotiations during the Danish presidency but it may be that negotiations will continue into Ireland's presidency in the first half of 2013.
I will have further opportunities to engage with my EU counterparts particularly at the forthcoming informal EU Council of Agriculture Ministers meeting to be held in Hungary next week, where the theme of the meeting is "How should the CAP contribute to a sustainable animal husbandry sector in Europe". It is also my intention to travel to the UK over the coming weeks and to meet my UK counterpart, Secretary of State Caroline Spellman and her team during that visit.