Reserving BPS payments or higher rates for farms between minimum and maximum sizes, as well as active farmers, were among the options discussed at the council of agriculture ministers in Brussels this Monday.

The future of direct CAP payments after 2020 was on the agenda and Bulgarian minister Rumen Porodzanov, who currently chairs the agriculture council, said: "We're at the stage when we need to be specific."

All options on the table

This month's meeting put all options on the table, including "the capping of payments, degressive payments, redistributive payments and the opportunity as it is now under certain measures under the first and second pillar to have a minimum threshold," Minister Porodzanov said. There were also discussions on ways to reserve payments for "active farmers" and whether to re-introduce more coupled payments attached to a certain level of production.

Member states should be given the flexibility to decide on how to improve the targeting and fairness of direct payments

The Irish position from Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed was to call for freedom for each member state to set the criteria if payments such as the BPS were to be targeted to specific farmers.

“While we are supportive of the commission's efforts to better target direct payments, we must be mindful that the agriculture sector differs significantly across member states in, for example, average farm size and agro-ecological conditions," Minister Creed said.

"In that context and in the spirit of subsidiarity envisaged in the European’s Commission’s CAP communication, member states should be given the flexibility to decide on how to improve the targeting and fairness of direct payments within their own country.”

Ministers intend to come back next month with conclusions on the use of these options in the next CAP.

They and European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan insisted that any firm plans for payments would depend on the overall EU budget for the post-2020 period, for which a draft is due in May.

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