Greening measures introduced as part of farmers’ payments look set to be dropped from the next CAP, if a report from the European Court of Auditors is anything to go by.

The auditors found that the new payments added more complexity to the system but had led to changed farming practices on only about 5% of EU farmland.

Payments designed to encourage farmers to “go green” are unlikely to enhance the Common Agricultural Policy’s environmental and climate-related performance significantly, the Court of Auditors concluded.

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Greening, introduced in 2013, was designed to reward farmers for having a positive impact on the environment.

Interviews

The auditors conducted interviews with the authorities in five Member States: Greece, Spain (Castile and León), France (Aquitaine and Nord-Pas-de-Calais), the Netherlands and Poland.

“Greening remains essentially an income support scheme,” said Mr Samo Jereb, member of the European Court of Auditors responsible for the report.

“As currently implemented, it is unlikely to enhance the CAP’s environmental and climate performance significantly”.

Unlikely to benefit

The auditors found that greening was unlikely to provide significant benefits for the environment and climate, mainly because a significant share of the practices subsidised would have been undertaken anyway without the payment.

They added that the results of greening were unlikely to justify the significant complexity the measures add to the CAP.

The auditors made a number of recommendations for the next CAP reform, including that:

  • Farmers should only have access to CAP payments if they comply with a set of basic environmental norms. Penalties for non-compliance should be sufficient to act as a deterrent;

  • Agricultural programmes to address environmental and climate needs should include performance targets and funding which reflect the costs incurred and the income lost as a result of activities going beyond the environmental baseline;
  • When member states can choose among options for implementing the CAP, they should have to demonstrate that their selected options are effective and efficient in achieving policy objectives.

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