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The 12-week public consultation on how the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should look after 2020 closes next week on 2 May.
With less than one week to go, a total of 187,200 responses have been received with 497 of these coming from Ireland.
Although this is a low percentage of the responses received overall, it is double the number that were received from Ireland last week.
Broken down by a nationality basis, over half of all responses, 97,116, have come from Germany with 24,100 from France, 17,000 from Spain and 14,300 from Italy.
The huge number of responses suggests the possibility of a coordinated campaign to drive responses. “Living Land, ” an anti-CAP coalition that includes Bird Life Europe & Central Asia, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and WWF EU, has published suggested responses on their website that members and interested parties could use.
Where the commission finds campaign type responses, they are segregated and analysed separately from the non-campaign responses and where a campaign is identified, it will be reported along with the number of people who supported it and their point of view.
Similarly where a large organisation responds on behalf of its members, its response is weighted to reflect the size of the organisation. The consultation is a qualitative survey, not a referendum, therefore the number of members an organisation has is considered in the overall context of the consultation.
With multiple responses and campaign-driven responses screened and identified, it will be of particular interest to learn what proportion they make up of the 187,200 total received so far. Full details will be made available at the stakeholder event in Brussels on 7 July.
In the meantime, Irish farmers are encouraged to make their views on CAP known before next Tuesday by clicking here.
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