There is less than one month left to go before the European Commission presents both its proposals for the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) and those concerning the next CAP.

The MFF is the EU’s multi-year budget plan that sets out how much each EU-funded programme will get over a seven-year budgetary timeframe, with the next MFF to run from 2028 to 2034.

The Commission has said that the next budget will divert funds to the “priorities and objectives where EU action is most needed”, warning that the “status quo is not an option” and “choices need to be made”.

Speculation mounted after the appointment of the new commissioners that the next MFF could see a radical shakeup in the way these funds are allocated and the merging of the CAP’s currently ringfenced budget into a wider funding pot has been mooted as a possibility from 2028 onwards.

Such a move would threaten the future funding of key CAP farm schemes and leave agriculture’s slice of Ireland’s allocation of the EU budget uncertain.

Planned agendas for upcoming Commission meetings list the post-2027 MFF package as an agenda item from 16 July, with this package including the “first set of sectoral proposals”. This mid-July date is also when Brussels is expected to come forward with its proposals for the next EU budget and the post-2027’s CAP proposals could be unveiled on the same date in a departure from the timeframes around previous CAP proposals, which would be published after the budget plans.

The MFF package and the second set of sectoral proposals are also listed on the Commission’s agenda at another meeting one week after this 16 July meeting.

Independent Ireland MEP Ciaran Mullooly told the Irish Farmers Journal that the European Commissioner for Budget Piotr Serafin indicted to him that the CAP budget “will remain fully within the control of the European Union and not handed to member states to allocate”.

“This development is particularly welcome given recent speculation around a possible merger between CAP pillar two and the EU Cohesion Fund. While such a merger could have undermined the targeted support rural areas receive, it is now clear that the CAP will remain a distinct and focused agricultural instrument,” Mullooly claimed.

‘We can’t have CAP changed overnight’

Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon met with EU agriculture ministers in Warsaw on Monday with the shape of the future CAP a key talking point among ministers.

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal, Minister Heydon said that proposals due to be published on 16 July on the future CAP are a source of major concern for member states.

“We have farmers who have borrowed and invested, with the assistance of State grants, very significantly in their holdings. They can’t have their complete funding model radically changed overnight in the blink of an eye.

“We have to try and protect the active farming model, and our family farm model here in Ireland is very much dependent on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP),” he said.