My Department is involved in working groups and in continuing discussions with the European Commission on the detailed rules for implementing the mid-term review agreement. I have already raised a number of issues relating to farmers who have retired under the early retirement schemes, and the implications for them of decoupling and the single payment scheme. The early retirement schemes is a voluntary scheme so the discussions do not differentiate between those who may have been forced to retire on health grounds and those who simply elected to retire.
Under the European Council regulation introducing the single payment scheme, a farmer may have access to the scheme if he or she was an active farmer during one or more of the reference years 2000, 2001 and 2002, and received payments under the livestock premia and/or arable aid schemes. In addition, farmers for whom entitlements will be established must activate those entitlements in 2005 by continuing to farm and submitting an area aid declaration in that year. In general, farmers must also have an eligible hectare of land for each payment entitlement. This does not have to be the same land on which the entitlements were established.
Farmers participating in the early retirement scheme before the commencement of the reference period will not have any entitlements established for them under the single payment scheme. This is because they had already retired from farming and their obligations under the early retirement scheme preclude them from returning to farming in the future. The persons who were leasing these retired farmer's lands, and were active farmers in the reference period, will have entitlements established for them. It should be noted that entitlements are attached to the farmer who was actively farming during the reference period, and not to the land.
During the Council negotiations last year I secured agreement that farmers — including offspring of farmers who retired before the reference period — who take over the holding of the retired farmers at some date in the future will be able to apply to the national reserve for payment entitlements under the single payment scheme. In the case of inheritance, including anticipated inheritance where the farmer hands over the holding definitively to his or her successor, the entitlements established by the farmer will pass directly to the beneficiary. Special arrangements have also been made for young farmers who started in farming during the reference years that allows them to have their entitlements based on the number of years they farmed in those years rather than on the average of the three years.
Farmers who entered the early retirement scheme during or after the reference period will have entitlements established for them, provided they were actively farming during the reference period and received payment under the relevant schemes. Due to the fact that these farmers undertook to give up farming definitively when they joined the early retirement scheme, they will not be in a position to obtain payment under the single payment scheme in 2005 or thereafter. The European Council regulation provides for such entitlements to revert to the national reserve. However, the question of whether retired farmers in this category should be allowed to activate entitlements — not for their own use but with a view to leasing them out in 2005 and thereafter — is one of the items still under discussion in the context of the Commission detailed rules regulation. Agreement on the detailed rules is not expected until the end of this month or early in April and will have to be awaited.
