Brussels approves first seven NSPs
The European Commission has finally approved the final CAP plans of the first seven EU countries: Ireland, Finland, France, Poland, Portugal and Spain. Brussels, these approvals of the National Strategic Plans (NSP) of a few large agricultural EU countries are an important step towards the implementation of the new common agricultural policy, starting next year.
For the period 2023-2027, €270 billion is available for agricultural payments. The seven approved plans together account for almost half of them (€120 billion), of which more than 34 are solely for environmental and climate objectives. As part of the new agricultural policy, EU countries can now propose a package of measures themselves, provided that they only contribute to ten EU criteria for sustainable agriculture. They must, however, lay down this contractually in national plans.
EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said European farmers need a long-term perspective, including a clear legal and financial framework. However, Wojciechowski could not yet say how advanced the negotiations are with the other twenty EU countries.
Deadline
Of the seven plans now approved, five of them had already been announced in June that Brussels had agreed to them. At the last minute, only Italy and Ireland have been added. All other countries have actually been known from May/June that they have not started the August 1 deadline, nor September of October.
Several Central European countries started submitting their plans much too late, because they really didn’t want the European Commission to have any say in them. Negotiations on the German plans are mainly stuck because the German traffic light coalition has not yet agreed on the financing of a major modernization of agricultural and livestock farming. Moreover, in Germany there is still a struggle for competences at the regional level.
More files
The approval of the Dutch NSP is delayed because there is ‘intertwining with other files’, as it is euphemistically used. It is not clear whether it is the Brussels of The Hague that links files together. Although nowhere has been formally confirmed, it is clear that manure and nitrogen are the major stumbling block for Brussels.
The EU Nitrate Committee will make a decision on 15 September on the Dutch request for an extension of the broader rules for the spreading of manure. The European Commission is expected to take the final decision the same Wednesday, a week later. This will then still have to be incorporated in the NSP agreements that will then take effect on 1 January 2023.