“You can tell the Irish farmers that I will be fighting for the best possible options,” Commissioner for Agriculture Christophe Hansen told the Irish Farmers Journal in Brussels last week while speaking about maintaining a ringfenced budget for agriculture in the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The European Commission is set to unveil its plans for the post-2027 CAP next month alongside its proposals for the next long-term EU budget.

There are increasing fears that the Commission could get rid of the current ringfenced budget for agriculture and move in favour of a single all-in EU budget.

The commissioner has said that he is pushing to keep the two separate pillars of CAP as they have “proven to be effective” for a number of decades.

“When it comes to future reform, we shouldn’t try make a revolution,” he said. “It’s more appropriate to look at those parts that are working well and only change what is not working well.

“The instruments that we have need to be maintained and the financial firing power needs to be maintained, otherwise we will weaken the sector even further and that would be detrimental. It’s a shared challenge, it’s not only a challenge for the Commission – the member states need to give the money in the end,” the Luxembourg native said.

Top-down approach

The CAP, he said, needs to move away from “a top-down approach” and incentivise farmers more to help achieve common objectives of fighting climate change, improved water quality and soil fertility.

“The one-size-fits-all approach is not working and we [need] to have a more tailored approach and a more territorial approach given the diversity of agriculture [across the EU],” Hansen said.