The ink is no sooner dry on a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) deal before speculation starts about how to change it. At Phil Hogan’s confirmation hearing before the agriculture committee of the European Parliament in October, much of the focus was on the prospects of a mid-term review, or MTR as it is known in the jargon-obsessed world of the Brussels bureaucrats. This is even before we reach the implementation phase of the new CAP, scheduled to begin next year.

On the face of it, it is ridiculous. The very idea of beginning the review process of such a complex package before it has even gone live, or is tested with farmers in any way, has little merit.

Against that, Brussels is a bureaucratic machine that endlessly generates proposals and continuously reviews each programme it delivers, in the same way as a farmer would do a daily check on livestock.

Therefore, the speculation has already started over, not just a MTR, but the next fundamental overhaul of the CAP. In that context, it is worth considering the factors that will influence either or both.

Momentum

The wind is with those who believe the CAP should strongly support active farmers – the ones who drive production. I say this despite the fact that the recent CAP deal orchestrated by Commissioner Ciolos saw those farmers with the previously highest payments cut, and cut substantially.

The reason both statements stand is because the initial proposals for fully flat payments came from the Ciolos Commission, supported by countries that have been traditionally anti-direct payments, such as the UK, and also the eastern European member states with lower average payments.

Along came the Irish presidency of the Council of Ministers, with Simon Coveney putting a firm stamp on the final outcome. The need to encourage production was re-established, with an element of the historic payments retained. Partial convergence – the narrowing of the range of entitlement values – replaced full flattening. This was an initiative from Ireland, finally delivered by the Coveney presidency.

Phil Hogan’s selection to succeed Ciolos reinforces the sense that this philosophy, that farm supports must encourage and underpin food production and land utilisation, has gained the centre ground in Brussels. If this informs the early debate around a future CAP, it’s good news for Ireland. It would ensure our thinking feeds directly into policy.

Timescale

The current changes will take the rest of the decade to bed in. Ireland will not achieve the benchmark minimum payment of €150/entitlement until 2019. This system will surely be left to bed in for a few years before being torn up and reconfigured.

The reforms introduced by former EU Commissioner Fischler were agreed in 2003, introduced in 2005, and left in place for a decade. This would suggest the Ciolos package, which was agreed in 2014 and will be introduced in 2015, may well survive until 2025.

There will be some form of mid-term review, but its likely focus will be on adjusting the implementation of the current CAP rather than changing its nature. Commissioner Phil Hogan has made it clear that farmers need stability, and that tearing up the Ciolos reforms would be unhelpful.

In this, he is surely correct, for two reasons. Firstly, there is no more of a consensus on how agriculture should be managed now than there was during the reform negotiations that dragged on from 2010 to mid-2013. Any renegotiation would expose the fault lines between the various geopolitical subdivisions within the EU.

Secondly, many of the issues that most affect and annoy farmers lie in the detail of the CAP’s application. The most obvious example of this is the row over commonages and GLAS that raged over the summer and autumn.

No fundamental CAP review is required to address and overcome this issue – what is needed is the levelling out of the inevitable wrinkles that accompany any such review.

The review is likely to occur in 2017, or possibly the following year. That means it will be 2020/21 before we begin any programme of reform (the Ciolos reforms began in 2010 and went on for over three years). So much will have changed by then that we cannot anticipate.

In the past decade (the Fischler era), we saw the collapse of the World Trade Organisation talks and the loss of power by that institution. We have suffered the most significant recession across the EU since the formation of the EEC, never mind the EU. Ukraine has become politically unstable, even as the former Yugoslav republics settle into life as independent countries, with Slovenia and Croatia now EU members.

That said, we can be certain of some issues that will define the shape of the EU as it enters into another new CAP reform. We can also predict some of the issues that will affect Europe’s attitude to farming, food production, rural development, and thus the CAP. Let’s run through them.

Budget

The first signpost to a new CAP will be when the next multi-annual financial framework (MFF) is negotiated in 2019. The hope must be that the EU economy has recovered by then.

The current EU budget is set out until 2020. The negotiations, chaired by Enda Kenny, resulted in a cut in the overall EU budget. The total annual budget for 2014-2020 is €142bn, of which about €59bn is designated for CAP. This means that the CAP actually retained its 41% share of the overall budget.

National share out

This was a key element of the Ciolos reforms. It is likely to be an issue again next time. Luckily for Ireland, this is one issue we are unaffected by. The key measure is average payments per hectare, and the Irish average is bang on the European average, so any rebalancing will leave us where we started.

The parallel drive for internal convergence, that is to flatten out payments within a country or region, will affect Ireland more. Its proponents want every hectare to have the same basic payment.

Ireland refused to accept this was rational or beneficial, and also refused the option of fencing off regions with poorer land and lower payments, as other countries did through internal regionalisation. This could well be the most divisive issue again in the internal debate among farmers.

Simplification

Commissioner Hogan himself put it very well in his confirmation hearing. “I want to simplify the CAP, but simplifying the CAP is not simple,” he said. The likelihood is that any MTR will target simplification, but farmers are mostly resigned to the fact that money from the public purse will always come wrapped in red tape.

Trade deals

“I will put rocket boosters under the EU/TTIP negotiations,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron in mid-November. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is the trade deal being thrashed out between the EU and the USA. Any deal will have a significant impact on European agriculture. The US has the potential to export massive volumes of food into Europe.

Any successful TTIP deal will open old arguments about equivalence of standards. The US farmer can avail of GM crops, growth hormones and chemicals now banned from use in Europe. The same applies to the Mercosur countries of South America, led by Brazil and Argentina, with whom Europe is also in ongoing trade talks.

There is a school of thought that European farmers receive subsidies to compensate for the competitive disadvantage of our higher production standards.

This body of opinion will push for the next CAP to be the vehicle to support farmers against US and South American product. In other words, we get the same money, but for a different reason. Farmers would expect new and higher funding to compensate for any forced lack of competitiveness.

Climate change

That competitiveness could be further eroded by any sectoral limits or targets imposed on agriculture to combat climate change.

Last month, EU leaders set out the roadmap for climate change action towards 2030. For the first time, the importance of agriculture, food production and food security were specifically mentioned. It’s a concept Ireland can claim ownership of.

The now Farm Commissioner Phil Hogan set the ball rolling himself in Johannesburg in 2012. When speaking as Ireland’s Environment Minister, he stated that food security had to be placed alongside climate change mitigation and adaptation as a priority for global leaders.

There’s no point in saving the planet if we starve its people was the nub of the argument.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny reinforced the message at a UN summit in September, and new Environment Minister Alan Kelly has played his part, ensuring it is in the consciousness when an action plan is formulated. However, climate change is real. There is an appetite to build a meaningful programme of mitigation in Europe and agriculture will have to play its part.

Greening was to be the CAP’s answer to the environmental question. It is little more than a damp squib, but expect the nature of greening to evolve over the next decade.

The UK – in or out

A decision by the UK to leave the EU would have profound implications for the European project, for the CAP and, of course, for Ireland as its nearest neighbour. It is unthinkable, and yet it could happen. John Major, a genuinely pro-Europe former Tory prime minister, said back in October that he puts the chances at little more than 50/50 that the UK will stay in.

What is certain is that if the Conservative party return to government after the next general election, it will offer a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. The rise of UKIP – the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party, means Cameron cannot row back on that commitment. Scotland narrowly voting to stay within the UK was good news – the Scots are historically and currently much more pro-EU than the English.

Were the UK to pull out, it would mean a total renegotiation for the remaining countries. This would force budgets back on the table, also programmes of governance and aid, and ask how the revised body should trade with the EU’s newest neighbour, the UK.

The UK is a net contributor to the EU to the tune of around €9bn a year for the next few years – over 8% of the EU’s overall budget. This would suggest that pretty deep cuts will be needed in all spending programmes, including the CAP, to cope with such a revenue loss. This would either take the form of line cuts or programme adjustments.

A UK withdrawal would also push the European balance of power further east. While Ireland has always allied itself with France in particular, and pro-agriculture countries such as Austria on farming issues, we would miss our neighbour around the Brussels negotiating table more than we might think. In the Parliament, Irish and British MEPs have close links.

The most profound outcome would be that Northern Ireland would be out of the EU, with the border running through our island becoming an EU border. This would be disastrous for both sides of the border. Northern Irish milk would be a non-EU product. Cross-border herd health strategies would be undermined. We must pray it never comes to pass. We may have to pray hard.