Independent MEP Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan is looking for an inflation adjustment to the CAP budget, ensuring land eligibility where farmers put environmental measures in place and raising the proportion of funds that are front-loaded from 2028.

The EU’s CAP budget envelope for Ireland in 1991 saw €1.694bn allocated to pillar one and €182m allocated to pillar two.

This would equate to €3.5bn for pillar one and €380m for pillar two when adjusted for the more than three decades’ worth of inflation since, but the current CAP sees just over €1.5bn allocated to Ireland between the two pillars.

The midlands north west MEP said increasing the CAP budget allocated in line with these levels of inflation would see farmers now receiving average direct payments of €790/ha over the first 30ha.

This would equate to almost €24,000 each year.

“If we could afford a budget like we had in 1991, then we should be more than able to afford it today,” Flanagan, who is currently leading the Left group of MEPs’ proposals for the next CAP, told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“If the European Commission are serious about strategic autonomy for Europe we should start with food.”

More frontloading

Flanagan is pushing to increase the amount of every entitlement assigned to front-loading – called Complementary Redistributive Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS) in the current CAP – from 10% to 20%.

In the current CAP, 10% of each entitlement’s value is taken and redistributed at a flat-rate of around €44/ha over the first 30ha of every BISS applicants’ land.

He maintains that combining an inflation-adjusted CAP allocation with a 20% level of CRISS would see farmers receive an average direct payment €81/ha higher than his calculated payment rate under current frontloading.

“With a payment of this magnitude farmers wouldn’t need simplification.

“They wouldn’t need guarantees to get money from bank. The banks would be delighted to see them,” he commented.

The midlands north west MEP played down hype around the need to secure a third ‘environmental’ pillar in the next CAP, suggesting that the focus should remain on funding levels rather than headings.