EU farm boss tries to lock in wins ahead of difficult budget talks

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s agriculture chief Christophe Hansen is on a mission to shield farmers from red tape and unnecessary checks, while securing more cash for the sector ahead of tough EU budget negotiations.

But while he is set to unveil a plan on Wednesday that aims to do just that, critics warn that the environment risks becoming collateral damage.

Hansen has promised farmers they will soon “feel the difference,” saying in a speech on Monday that his proposal to simplify the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy will “decrease the cost of administrative burden for farmers by almost €1.5 billion annually.”

This comes as the EU is getting ready for stiff talks in the second half of this year on the bloc’s next long-term budget for 2028-2034. The €1.2 trillion cash pot could be drastically reformed, according to first ideas floated by the European Commission late last year — including the CAP.

Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission is also due to lock horns on the budget on Wednesday, as she aims to cut the number of spending programs and tie funding to progress on reform. But EU agriculture ministers are strongly pushing back against any significant overhaul of the next farm budget.

Hansen has also pledged to defend farmers’ interests in the upcoming negotiations, and his simplification package aims to be a testament to that.

According to a leaked draft seen by POLITICO, the EU executive wants to exempt smallholders from some checks, raise the cap on subsidy payments to small farms and create new funds to help farmers cope with natural disasters, like droughts and floods.

But the plan also mulls cutting some of the CAP’s green requirements and weakening rules to protect rivers and safeguard peatlands and wetlands, which play a key role in storing carbon emissions.

Green tape

This has been a key demand of farmers’ organizations following widespread protests last year — and a big concern for green campaigners and some European lawmakers.

Marilda Dhaskali, senior agriculture and land-use officer at the NGO BirdLife Europe, said she feared Hansen’s plan serves “the destructive agenda of industrial agribusiness, that comes at the expense of nature, the environment, and public accountability.”

She criticized that “taxpayers’ money will be handed out with minimal checks,” and that the proposal “breaks the vital link between farming policy and climate and environmental goals.”

Meanwhile, Arnaud Rousseau, the head of the powerful French farmers’ union FNSEA, didn’t mince his words against the European Green Deal during an event near Brussels on Monday, and vowed to stop it altogether.

“Let’s look clearly at the mistakes we’ve made, and at this Green Deal, which has not delivered on the promises it made to farmers, and which nobody wants to admit is dead,” Rousseau said at the Global Food Forum.

Luc Vernet, secretary-general of Farm Europe, which represents various economic actors in the agricultural sector, said at the same event that “it is absolutely clear that in terms of complexity we went too far at the European level.”

But simplification shouldn’t come at the expense of hard-won measures to green the CAP, according to French member of the European Parliament Pascal Canfin of the centrist Renew Europe.

“We’re no longer simplifying but deregulating,” he said during a parliamentary committee meeting on Monday.

Canfin fears that some of the proposals from the Commission, notably to protect rivers from pesticides and fertilizers pollution, could soon disappear when they’re meant to “protect biodiversity” and ensure all European farmers play by the same rules.

“We're going to unravel the rules of the internal market and introduce even more competition between European farmers,” Canfin warned.

But Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle, director for strategy and policy analysis at the Commission’s agriculture department, pushed back.

“I can reassure Mr. Canfin that we are not scrapping the rules on buffer strips [near rivers] but aligning the definitions,” she replied, adding that “we are mainly focusing our effort on simplification on small farmers and also make sure that we better recognize the work of organic farmers.”

Parliamentary split

Clear dividing lines are starting to form between political forces in the Parliament. This suggests that Hansen’s simplification proposal is likely to face resistance when seeking the green light of both MEPs and EU capitals.

Dario Nardella, an Italian MEP with the center-left Socialists and Democrats, said he’s cautious about the agricultural simplification package.

“With more simple and clear rules, we can really support farmers,” he said, but warned against the risk of creating “total chaos with a huge deregulation.”

Green MEP Pär Holmgren, from Sweden, agreed “we need to reduce the administrative burden for farmers but that is not at all equal to decreasing environmental measures and standards, and this is definitely not helpful to change the rules time and time again.”

Hansen acknowledged that “not everybody in the European Parliament will embrace this simplification package. They will argue that there is a lowering of the ambition [of the CAP].”

But he will find allies among right-wing groups and within his own political family, the European People’s Party, which campaigned on a pro-farmer platform in last year’s EU election.

German EPP member Peter Liese hit back at critics of Hansen’s plan. “This is simplification and I don’t think that it will in any case harm the environment,” he said.

Changing narrative

As farmers’ unions keep asking for simpler rules, more money for the sector and to roll back the Green Deal, Hansen will keep championing their demands.

Wednesday’s package is just the start, he said. 

The Commission will present another simplification package before the end of the year, this time focused on environmental and food safety policies beyond the CAP.

The EU executive is also working on its proposal for the next CAP, expected to land in mid-July, at the same time as the bloc’s next budget proposal, the seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework.

This new CAP will be “simpler” and “more targeted to those most in need,” said Geslain-Lanéelle of the Commission’s agriculture department.

“We will also, without decreasing the environmental and climate ambition of the CAP, see how we can evolve from conditions to incentives,” she added, arguing that linking EU subsidies to green conditionality “has been difficult to implement.”

This second package “will be even better,” Hansen said. But, he admitted, “it will as well be more difficult, I have to say.”

This story has been updated. Gregorio Sorgi contributed reporting.