European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan and Joao Figueiredo from the European Court of Auditors (ECA) went toe-to-toe in a passionate debate in the European Parliament’s agriculture committee on the CAP proposals this week.

It was one of the most passionate debates in recent times and it had been expected, given the caustic reception given to the ECA’s highly critical report on the CAP proposals launched by Commissioner Hogan at the start of June.

With each side given 15 minutes by the committee chair to present their case, Figueiredo went first.

He began by criticising the definition of public needs and the absence of clear objectives, inputs, processes, outputs, results, impacts and accountability.

He was also critical of the coherence and consistency of the proposals.

ECA criticism

His most scathing comments were that the post-2020 CAP proposals lacked long-term vision and that it repeated the instruments of the old CAP.

Direct payments were targeted by the auditors, who said that economic evidence was not provided for them.

The ambition to have member states present their plans within an overall framework were also attacked by the auditors, who were sceptical on this as a way of delivering environmental and climate ambitions as presented in the CAP proposals.

Capping of payments to large farms also failed to get the auditors' approval, because with paid and unpaid labour not being taken into account, they felt the ceiling on payments was ineffective.

Moving the CAP to a performance-based system was welcomed, but dammed with faint praise because the auditors didn’t believe the proposals contain the necessary elements of a performance system.

They also didn’t rate the accountability element of the CAP 2020 proposals.

Hogan hits back

From his opening comments, Hogan made clear he was meeting the challenge head on, starting by expressing disappointment that the report was leaked as soon as it was sent to the commission before he had time to consider it.

The Commissioner effectively rubbished the report using the diplomatic language of saying the court had based its findings “on a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the Commission’s proposals”.

Hogan went on to accuse the ECA of failing to use “basic facts and publicly available information which could have been taken into account” and, in some other cases, "certain assertions regarding alleged shortcomings of the Commission are not substantiated.”

Fundamental rejection

On climate and environmental ambition, he fundamentally rejected the ECA opinion highlighting the enhanced conditionality applying to direct payments, the mandatory eco schemes in pillar 1 and the the additional measures in pillar 2.

The criticism of direct payments was particularly sensitive for the Commissioner, as indeed it was for many of the committee members.

In terms of justification, Hogan referred the ECA to the provisions of article 39 of the treaty, which defines the purpose of the CAP as being “to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, in particular by increasing the earnings of persons engaged in agriculture”.

Committee responses

Committee members then had an opportunity to give their views, though with just one minute of speaking time, contributions were extremely brief.

Unsurprisingly, the committee was very much with the Commissioner in the battle with the ECA.

However, in an earlier session on the CAP proposals, it was clear the different priorities from different member states would mean that much work has to be done to get the CAP 2020 proposals over the line after the budget is approved.