Start of CAP trilogues and recommendations to Member States

Only a few weeks after the votes on the CAP files in the European Parliament and the Council, the three EU institutions are already negotiating  the final version of the reform. In parallel, the European Commission is preparing recommendations for Member States’ CAP Strategic Plans. 

The CAP Trilogues began mid-November under the German Presidency and are foreseen to go on until next spring, under the Portuguese Presidency. One of the negotiations’ main challenges will be the integration of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies’ targets in the Strategic Plans regulation. EU leaders began the work with a key piece of the new CAP, the green architecture. Discussions around conditionality and Eco-schemes will be at the heart of December trilogues. 

As negotiations happen behind closed doors, IFOAM Organics Europe calls for more transparency in the process, allowing its members and other European citizens to follow the reform process, and its alignment with the EU Green Deal’s objectives. 

In parallel to these discussions, the Commission is preparing recommendations to Member States. Their aim is to provide national governments with guidance on the design of the CAP Strategic Plans and to underline areas where efforts are needed to reach the Farm to Fork strategy’s ambitions. 

According to IFOAM Organics Europe, all Member States should include a national target for organic land in their CAP Strategic Plans, which would represent a fair contribution to the European target, and should provide the necessary support through conversion and maintenance aids either through Rural Development measures (Pillar 2), or Eco-schemes (Pillar 1), or a combination of both.