Three years after former Irish Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan presented plans for CAP reform, Brussels is gearing up to sign off on the final package.

Decisions made in the coming days will govern farm payments out to 2027. Negotiators from the European Parliament and European Council have spent over six months trying to bridge gaps between both sides but much work remains to be done.

While late-night talks often throw up unforeseen issues, here are three of the main areas that remain unsolved entering this crunch week.

1 CAP’s “green architecture”

The term “green architecture” is EU jargon for everything climate- and environment-related in the CAP.

It will be one of the biggest shakeups in the next farm policy, with direct payment funds to go towards eco-schemes.

The biggest battle to be fought on this front will be the ring-fencing of funds for eco-schemes.

The European Parliament wants 30% while the European Council entered talks with a position of 20%. Since then, a compromise offer of 25% has been made.

The inclusion of a learning period and what happens to unspent funds is likely to be where the focus will be.

2 Payment redistribution

How direct payments are divided up among farmers is always one of the most contentious issues in CAP reform.

The proposals on the table include several familiar and novel elements in this area.

Convergence is going to continue, with just the rate at which it occurs undecided.

The original target of 75% looks set to increase to 85% as a compromise but the Parliament has not yet given up on full convergence.

The definition of “active farmer” is not yet settled and a “new farmer” definition may also be introduced.

The final question mark is over whether instruments such as capping, front-loaded payments, and a small farmer scheme will be optional or mandatory requirements.

3 Compliance versus performance

The theme for the next reform was that it would shift the CAP from a compliance-based model to a performance-based one.

To facilitate this change, a number of result indicators need to be set up. Member state performance will then be judged against these.

The number of indicators and what they will be is still up for decision.

At a farmer level, cross-compliance rules are to be renamed as conditionality and much of these conditions have not yet been finalised.