Luis Planas: "The proposal to simplify the Common Agricultural Policy includes a lot of Spain's requests"

The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, is pleased with the proposal for the package of measures to simplify the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) presented by the European Commission on 14 May, as it "includes a large part of the requests presented by Spain".

Luis Planas pointed out that the European Commission's legislative initiative represents an "important step forward" towards greater simplification and a lessening of the bureaucratic burden demanded by Member States. In this regard, he praised the fact that the Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Cristophe Hansen, is seeking to simplify the current CAP to make it more effective and better targeted at the problems faced by farmers and livestock farmers.

Following the amendments to the CAP introduced last year, the need to continue in this line of work was noted, and for this reason the European Commission itself has once again submitted a new proposal that includes the main requests made by Spain.

The new draft regulation proposes the abolition of the annual clearance of yield, a procedure which was a considerable administrative burden and which risked leaving without funding costs which are perfectly eligible under the rules. Spain took the lead in sending a letter to the European Commission in November 2024 requesting this abolition, which was signed by all 27 EU member states.

Another Spanish aspiration is to reduce the scope of the quality assessment of the area monitoring system (AMS). Also on this issue, Spain was the lead country in a March 2024 submission, which was supported by 20 member states.

The European Commission has also incorporated into its legislative proposal the Spanish request to increase the limit on the financial aid provided by the European Union to the operational programmes of fruit and vegetable producer organisations (FVPOs). The European Commission's proposal aims to make these organisations eligible for the additional aid of 0.5% of the value of marketed production.

In addition, the ministry welcomes other measures included in the proposed legislative package concerning flexibilities in enhanced cross-compliance - such as exemption from controls and sanctions for beneficiaries under the Payments for Small Farmers (PSF) scheme - in the eco-schemes and in the modification of the national strategic plans.

Non official translation