The minister explained how Spain is analysing the proposals, although it considers that the budgetary amounts being sought to finance political objectives need to be announced before reaching a definitive agreement on the final structure of the CAP. However, "the European Parliament has already opened up a very specific debate on the different EU regulations", explained Miguel Arias Cañete.
In this respect, the minister recalled how the ministry called on the autonomous regions and on the agricultural associations to agree "not to a position on general lines but rather a common stance on each specific point of the EU regulations".
The minister explained that certain worrying aspects have been detected in the reform proposal. "One is the number of hectares eligible under the new aid system, both basic aid and aid tied to the greening of the CAP which, in the case of Spain, may cause tremendous problems". Another, explained Miguel Arias Cañete, "is the diversity of the production characteristics of the Spanish agriculture and livestock sector, which makes it very difficult to homogenise aid and requires an enormous degree of flexibility to apply the CAP in Spanish territory when the definitive model is established". "With the current mechanisms that exist under the regulations, we do not have sufficient flexibility to apply a CAP that maintains the subsidies to our agriculture sector", he added.
Miguel Arias Cañete described the dependency of the sector on EU subsidies. "The average amount that agricultural aid represents of Gross Agricultural Income is almost 27%. But if we deduct fruit and vegetables from Gross Agricultural Income, which do not receive direct payments and have very limited support systems, the average is much higher than 40-45% for many crops", he stated. "If there were a serious redistribution on grounds of increasing the number of hectares or a complex regional redistribution, there would be many sectors that would not be economically viable and certain crops could be abandoned with the loss of agricultural activity", underlined Miguel Arias Cañete.
Finally, the minister indicated two aspects of the reform that are not sufficiently developed: improving the position of farmers in the agro-food chain and the mechanisms for regulating the market.
As regards the first issue, the minister explained that many more steps need to be taken to "incorporate proposals that enable the concentration of the offer, a greater weighting of farmers in the participation of added value in the chain, and that this could even include proposing modifications to the rules on competition similar to those which Commissioner Dacian Ciolos skilfully fostered for the dairy sector, which is a model that we believe could be followed in many other sectors in the food chain".
As regards the second issue, the mechanisms for regulating the market, Miguel Arias Cañete has requested that they be "more flexible and more effective, based on objective parameters which are automatically triggered in a crisis, which can be objectified and which the European Commission and the European funds, together with national and complementary autonomous region policies can respond to".