Although the detailed proposals from the Commission on the future of the CAP will not be published until next week, we know from the Commission communication, the EU budget proposals and public pronouncements provided by the Commission in policy debates that the Commission is pressing for a 30% mandatory "green" component in direct payments for additional agri-environmental measures beyond current cross compliance. The "greening" measures being mooted include retention of permanent pasture, crop diversification and ecological set-aside.
Of course I fully support the idea of encouraging sustainable forms of agriculture and this is at the heart of the Food Harvest 2020 strategy. However, we need to keep things simple and to avoid creating excessive bureaucracy. While the greening measure that would be predominant in Ireland — retention of permanent pasture — should not create major compliance problems, the existence of separate greening conditions would complicate our single payment scheme. We should also be mindful of the considerable greening already in place through cross compliance. There is a further complication for Ireland in that a 30% flat rate greening component would exacerbate the movement towards uniform national or regional payment rates. I believe we should consider whether there are alternative simpler approaches to achieving the Commission's objectives.
I have discussed this and other matters related to the CAP reform with the Commission and a number of my EU counterparts. Most recently, last week I met my French counterpart, Bruno Le Maire, and we agreed on a common set of priorities for the reform of the CAP which included a commitment "to ensure that future "greening" of the direct income support schemes should be simple to apply both for farmers and Member States administrations and should not entail additional costs for either; the scope of the greening should be pegged to the budgetary resources allocated to the CAP".