The European Commission looks set to ditch the two-pillared structure of the CAP as part of its drive for spending efficiency and flexibility in the next EU budget.

A newly leaked draft of Commission proposals seen by the Irish Farmers Journal suggests that Brussels will soon seek to merge future CAP funding with currently separate funding streams into a larger ‘national and regional partnership fund’.

A merging of agriculture's funding pot with other EU budget headings into a larger single budget had been much speculated over recent months, as the Commission prepared its official budget plans for 2028 onwards.

Proposals

The official 2028-2034 EU budget proposals are due to be published on Wednesday, with the CAP proposals to follow soon after.

CAP’s pillar one is currently funded under the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF), while pillar two receives a slice out of a separate funding pot - the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD).

The Commission’s draft pitch claims that the merging of these agriculture and cohesion funding headings will see a “simpler and more flexible policy framework that enhances synergies and complementarities across sectors”.

It claims that there are many opportunities for “synergies between the CAP and other EU policies” not currently utilised with the split nature of EU agriculture and cohesion funds.

Impact assessment

An impact assessment cited in the draft proposal documents found that having member states integrate CAP into their national and regional partnership fund plans would bring “significant benefits” to the spending of EU funding.

The documents said that the impact assessment found that one funding envelope for member states “would enable efficient and flexible allocation of funding, allowing for easy reallocation of resources to address new priorities or challenges”.

The proposals do not outline the size of the next CAP’s budget, but state that the budget will be “robust and commensurate” within this larger partnership fund.