All CAP Strategic Plans approved, just like Parliament’s report on long-term vision for rural areas 

On 13 December, the European Commission approved the last national Common Agricultural Policy’s (CAP) Strategic Plan and the European Parliament approved its own initiative report on the Commission’s long-term vision for rural areas. 

Commission approves 28 national CAP Strategic Plans 

On 13 December, the European Commission approved the Dutch national CAP Strategic Plan, as last of the 28 plans. Their implementation will start as of 1 January 2023 and they will run until 31 December 2027. 

As we already mentioned in our last assessment (March 2022), most of the CAP national Strategic Plans have set insufficient national targets of organic farmland to contribute to the EU’s overall target of 25% agricultural organic land by 2030. Moreover, the budget is too low to boost organic farming and incentivize conventional farmers to convert to organic. Information about which targets and budgets should have been set up at Member State level to reach the EU’s 25% target in 2030 is available in our study Prospects & developments for organic in national CAP Strategic Plans (June 2021). 

A thorough assessment of the final 28 CAP Strategic Plans will be released in April 2023, as part of the Horizon Europe project OrganicTargets4EU that we are leading.  

Our members can find more information on our work on the CAP on our extranet. Interested in being a member? Contact [email protected]  

Parliament approved own report on rural areas 

On 13 December, the European Parliament approved its own initiative report (2021/2254(INI)) on the European Commission’s long-term vision for rural areas: Towards stronger, connected, resilient and prosperous rural areas by 2040. 465 Members of the European Parliament voted in favor, 29 were against and 131 abstained.  

As IFOAM Organics Europe, we welcome the own-initiative report as it “recognises the central role of agriculture (…), including agroecology and organic farming, in providing fair income to farmers”, which is crucial for the vitality of these territories. It also emphasis “the potential of bio-districts (…) for rural economy diversification”. To know more about the contribution of organic farming to dynamise rural areas, read our paper (November 2020). 

To know more about our work on the CAP and rural development, contact [email protected]