Over 250,000 responses to the CAP public consultation came from a group of citizens organised by Living Land, an EU-wide network of nature conservation organisations. These include the World Widlife Fund (WWF) and Irish members such as BirdWatch and An Taisce, and their responses to the consultation outnumbered those given by any other group.
Their position is that “CAP is broken and must be fixed” – a view shared by most respondents to the consultation when it comes to environment protection, with farmers and non-farmers agreeing that it has failed to deliver in this area. Living Land argues that “CAP pillar 1 subsidies should be replaced with incentives tied to targeted (and monitored) social and environmental requirements,” adding that these should be targeted to smaller farmers.
CAP 2020: the view from European capitals