The UK and EU should have similar farming rules in the future, according to EU Commissioner Phil Hogan. The call for aligned farming rules was made in a speech at Edinburgh University earlier this week on “Agriculture Post 2020 – Future Challenges and Opportunities”.

“A high degree of alignment would make a lot of sense,” said Hogan at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) rural conference. “A common-sense approach is needed, and Scotland has the ability to exert a lot of influence during negotiations.”

The Commissioner went on to call for vet and health alignment, particularly to tackle diseases across the continent. He stressed that the more alignment of the rules, the easier a trade deal can be to complete.

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Commenting on the UK’s Brexit negotiating stance, he said: “The UK is running out of options, they don’t want regulatory alignment, they don’t want a customs union and they don’t want free movement of people.”

The speech set out some of the key aspects of future CAP in the EU. All payments will be linked to a climate-change or environmental benefit. The Commissioner reminded the audience of the damage done to the environment by food production drives, saying: “We don’t want to find ourselves [with] the same problem that our friends in New Zealand did.”

Future EU farm schemes will also see investment in precision agriculture and smart technology, with Hogan calling for the industry to “address the data revolution currently underway”.

Pillar-one payments, largely directed to farmers, may have increased flexibility for Member States to put funds towards “public good” projects, said Hogan. He explained that farm audits may have their rules set at the Member-State level, as opposed to the current top-down approach from the EU.

This is the 11th OECD rural development conference, having previously been hosted in Mexico, Italy, the US, Russia and Canada.

The conference brings international policy-makers, private-sector business people and experts together to discuss rural development.