Lastig te bewerken landbouwgronden krijgen wellicht meer Europese subsidie in de toekomst (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Tuesday (21 April) issued recommendations for a reclassification of those areas across Europe where it is not as easy to receive farm aid.
The EU executive hopes to rationalise what it believes to currently be an unwieldy system with over a hundred different criteria set at the national level into a simpler one with eight soil and climate criteria.
The move comes in response to a 2003 finding by the EU Court of Auditors that the existing system, with its variegated definitions, could be a possible source of inequality in treatment across the EU.
In such regions, termed "less favoured areas" (LFA) in Brussels jargon, agricultural activities are more difficult because of so-called natural handicaps, such as difficult climatic conditions, steep slopes in mountain areas, or low soil productivity.
Because agriculture is harder in these regions, it is also less profitable and so farmers often move on to literally greener pastures. This abandonment of farmland can then produce a loss of biodiversity, desertification, forest fires and changes to the rural landscape.
The LFA payment scheme exists to prevent this from happening.
"The delimitation of areas with natural handicaps for agriculture needs to be rationalised and the aid better targeted," said agriculture commissioner Marianne Fischer-Boel i.
"It is in the interest of farmers and of all of us that these areas continue to be farmed so as to prevent environmental damage," she added. "The objective is not to reduce or to enlarge the less favoured areas, but to set up a delimitation system which is clear and transparent.
However, harmonisation of the system is likely to reduce dramatically the amount of "intermediate" LFA regions.
The primary change is a shift from criteria that are essentially socio-economic - such as being far away from markets, low service provision and remoteness - to purely "bio-physica" criteria.
The eight new criteria would be low temperature, heat stress, soil drainage, soil texture and stoniness, soil rooting depth, soil chemical properties, soil moisture balance and slope. Islands and mountainous and coastal regions are unaffected by the proposal however.
A country such as Ireland would likely see a sharp drop in LFA designations. Currently, some 77 percent of the country is termed an intermediate LFA. Similarly 95 percent of Luxembourg is so designated.
Some farmers organisations, notably in Scotland and Wales, have criticised the proposal, saying the primary difficulty they encounter is precisely these socio-economic obstacles, rather than those that are bio-physical, and warn that the changes will force farmers to abandon their livelihood, the opposite of what the LFA scheme intends.
The commission only adopted a communication on the matter on Tuesday. Agriculture ministers are to discuss the subject later this week.
EU member states meanwhile must now carry out simulations using national data to assess the feasibility of the new categorisation and submit their findings to the commission in October.
Full implementation is likely to be in place by 2014.