Hello, you will find in the program this month:
CAP 2013: a more than mitigated record
To start with, we invite you to take a look at two recent reports by the European Court of Auditors, which give a more than mitigated picture of decoupled aid and the greening of the first pillar. By wanting to run two hares at a time, 1st pillar aids are not effective in supporting income, nor in ensuring better protection of natural resources. The results of exiting milk quotas is of the same ilk, as the economist Thierry Pouch explains it, with a Commission playing firefighters-pyromaniac by closing the doors of the stocks of intervention and which seems more than ever to be counting on the Darwinism to select producers.
The great caution of agricultural sectors’ action plans regarding mutual funds
Presented by some as the future of the CAP, the limits of mutual funds are beginning to be apprehended by the French sectors. Following the French Food Summit, the drafting of the sectoral action plans has allowed the actors to go beyond slogans to begin the in-depth study of these tools. Although time is running out and in the end no detailed work on this subject has yet been made public, it is pleasing to note great caution on the part of inter-professional organizations.
For new rules of international trade
“The Doha Round is now considered dead, not to say buried” is the statement made by Kimberley Ann Elliott in an article published by the ICTSD. She goes even further by saying that it died in July 2008 when Americans and Indians could not agree in the midst of a food crisis. Faced with this finding of failure, the temptation is great for some to move on to not having to question the certainties that led to the paralysis of multilateralism. It is India’s fear that has just convened an informal WTO meeting with 52 delegations. In an international context that feels like the end of the cycle, will the European Union be able to give itself the means to be a force of proposal? It is to be hoped that the search for greater coherence between these policies will help in this direction, and the recent conference organized by the European Committee of the Regions on “Changing the rules of international trade to meet the agricultural, food and planetary challenges marks without doubt an important first step.
The bankruptcy of the largest German agricultural firm
Finally, we invite you to come back to the bankruptcy of KTG Agrar, the largest German agricultural firm. Most of the business has been taken over, but the purchase of part of the land by insurer Munich Re bypassing the pre-emption rights of local farmers seems to have revived the debate over the need for land regulations more efficient on the other side of the Rhine.
