Farm Europe regrets AGRI Committee vote putting the CAP’s dedicated performance framework at risk

Farm Europe regrets the missed opportunity resulting from today’s vote in the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI), which endorsed compromise amendments maintaining the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) performance framework within the proposed horizontal Regulation on budget expenditure tracking and performance.

While the adopted compromise introduces some improvements to the European Commission’s initial proposal, it ultimately fails to safeguard the CAP’s specific governance and accountability architecture. By keeping the CAP performance framework outside the CAP Regulation, the AGRI Committee has endorsed an approach that risks weakening the policy’s coherence and effectiveness.

The CAP is a unique common European policy with its own objectives, governance system and delivery model. Its performance framework should therefore remain embedded in the CAP legislative framework, where indicators and monitoring tools can be designed to properly reflect the realities of agriculture and rural development.

Moving these provisions into a horizontal regulation covering a wide range of EU policies creates a precedent that could gradually dilute the CAP’s autonomy and undermine the policy’s ability to demonstrate its contribution to Europe’s strategic priorities, including food security, competitiveness, resilience and environmental sustainability.

As discussions on the future Multiannual Financial Framework and the post-2027 CAP continue, Farm Europe calls on the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission to restore a CAP’s dedicated performance architecture during the forthcoming interinstitutional negotiations. Preserving the integrity of the CAP’s governance framework remains essential to ensuring that the policy can effectively respond to the challenges facing European agriculture.