European Commission (EC) has presented a proposal for the budget of the Common Agricultural Policy for the new programming period from 2028 to 2034, and reactions from farmers, primarily negative, are already pouring in. Namely, the total budget for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), if adopted by the European Parliament, will amount to around 300 billion euros, which is only 15 percent of the total EU budget, while the share for agriculture in the previous programming period was 32.22 percent of the EU budget, originally calculated without EU NextGen program.
This is the ‘price’ that farmers will apparently have to pay as military needs, as things currently stand, are prioritized. For Croatian agriculture in the new programming period of the CAP, 3.70 billion euros is allocated, while in the previous period it amounted to 4.99 billion euros, which is over a fifth less. This refers to so-called income support, or subsidies, and how much will be allocated for the second pillar (Rural Development Fund) remains a significant unknown for now, primarily because, in addition to the amount of money, the structure of the budget is changing, i.e., it seems that there will no longer be a second pillar.
Despite the protests, it seems that the EC has no intention of significantly deviating from the proposed CAP budget.
This was confirmed to us by the president of the Croatian Chamber of Agriculture (HPK) Mladen Jakopović, who participated yesterday and today in the assembly of Copa-Cogeca, the umbrella organization of European farmers, where Elizabeth Werner, the Director-General of the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission (DG AGRI), was also present. Werner confirmed in her presentation that the EC currently does not foresee significant deviations from the previously proposed budgetary constraints, despite pressures from the sector and the increasing challenges faced by farmers.
– The Croatian Chamber of Agriculture, along with all other representatives of Copa-Cogeca, expressed serious concern and disappointment regarding the announced reduction of funds for the CAP in the next programming period. It was warned that such an approach jeopardizes the sustainability of European agriculture, competitiveness in the global market, as well as the sector’s ability to respond to the growing demands related to climate change, food security, and rural development – said Jakopović.
He is particularly concerned that allocations for agriculture in the new programming period will be nominally less than in the previous one, not even accounting for the real decline in the value of money.
– This reduced amount will significantly affect future investments and the maintenance of the current competitiveness of Croatian agriculture and the achievement of strategic goals of increasing production and self-sufficiency, which is why we are extremely concerned. With such a budget proposal, we must expect either a reduction in production in the EU or a significant increase in the prices of agricultural products and food – he added.
Marko Vešligaj, a Croatian representative and member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture, also expressed his disagreement with the proposed CAP budget. He told the Agroklub portal that the problem is not just less money for European agriculture, but also the change in budget structure. Namely, there will be no special Rural Development Fund, but the entire CAP, ‘for lack of a better word, has drowned in a new large fund within which the common agricultural policy, cohesion policy, European social fund, and other programs would now be located.’
Vešligaj says it is unclear how everything that was initially in the second pillar of the CAP will be financed, reminding that the European Parliament had previously recommended that rural development must be financed outside of cohesion policy and cannot be understood as an incidental financial axis.
