CAP ALLOCATIONS: FEW (RELATIVE) WINNERS, MANY LOSERS

The European Commission published, on the 17th of September, the draft national allocations of the Common Agricultural Policy, for the period 2028-2034 in the context of the ongoing negotiations of the next multi-annual financial framework. Overall, the European Commission is proposing a multi-speed effort to the budget reduction proposal.
Given the stated desire by the European Commission to focus the CAP on “those who need it most”, questions arise as to the relevance and modalities of a distribution key. For example, the Netherlands is among the relative “winners” of the European Commission’s proposal, or on of the « best looser » together with Spain and the Portugal. Without undermining the importance of the agricultural sector in the Netherlands, and its high productivity per hectare, it’s important to remind that over the last years, farmers in this Member State benefited from a national top-up of comfortable State Aids which overall represents at least 100% of their direct payments during the last four years. Spain and Portugal would also benefit (in relative terms) from this distribution key in comparison to other Member States.

If France, Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia overall keep their share of the (smaller) CAP budget, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Greece, Denmark and Luxembourg are on the side of the most bigger loosers.

This first assessment takes into account the fact that all Member States are not benefiting from the POSEI programme (outmost regions). It will have to be fine-tuned integrating the LEADER programmes and takes into account sectorial interventions, in particular Fruits and Vegetables. However, further fine-tuning of the calculation should not change substantially the trend.

Overall, France remains the first beneficiary of this policy, in front of Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland and Romania.