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Financing accession for new Member States

At the end of June, the Commission presented a Communication with a draft financial package for the accession negotiations with Montenegro for debate in the Council. This is the first step in concluding Chapter 33 on financial and budgetary provisions in the accession negotiations. It will allow the Council to debate these financial issues alongside work on the other remaining chapters, and on this basis the Commission will subsequently present to the Council a draft common position for negotiations on financial and budgetary provisions.

The package presented in the Communication assumes that Montenegro joins the EU on 1 January 2028 when the new MFF is planned to begin. This is a technical assumption, and the Communication makes clear that accession will happen only when Montenegro has fulfilled the conditions for membership and when its accession treaty is ratified by all parties. If Montenegro joins at a later date during the MFF period, the dates for phasing in payments will be adjusted accordingly.… Read the rest

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A CAP built to last: four adjustments towards a durable farm budget

Cora Petrick and Nikolai Pushkarev are associated with the Think Tank Agora Agriculture based in Germany and Brussels.

The proposed reduction in earmarked funding for agriculture in the EU’s next budget has generated significant controversy. Yet, financial pressure on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is not new. Adjusted for inflation and per hectare of agricultural land, the CAP budget has declined by about 40 percent over the past 25 years, as shown in the figure below.

This downward trend could continue in the next budgetary period. Under current proposals, the minimum annual CAP budget per hectare from 2028 onward would be about half the funding level in 2000. The final allocation of EU funding for the CAP will depend on national decisions and the size of the overall EU budget. Even if the CAP budget ultimately turns out to be higher than initially proposed, it is unlikely to reverse the long-term decline.… Read the rest

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Incentivising climate action in Irish agriculture and land use

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of giving an invited talk at the Irish Environmental Protection Agency’s annual Climate Change Conference 2026 in Dublin. My topic was “Incentivising climate action in the agriculture and land use sectors”. Irish agriculture has shown a steady improvement in emissions intensity, but almost no reduction in absolute emissions since 1990. As it accounts for 36% of emissions in the national inventory (excluding energy use and soil emissions), there is an urgent need to adopt lower-emission technologies and to shift to lower-emission land uses at scale.

The key issue I raise is, if we want lower-emissions agriculture and land use in Ireland, then how do we make lower-emissions land use economically viable at farm level? And how do we incentivise that change? Land use systems do not change simply because alternative systems appear environmentally desirable. They change when there are viable markets, reliable income streams, manageable risks, functioning supply chains, and credible long-term incentives.… Read the rest

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The Commission’s proposal to replace the ‘active farmer’ definition appears more bureaucratic

There are two parallel debates taking place in this CAP reform round under the general rubric of targeting, or who deserves support. One issue is around the definition of an active farmer. The other is that support should be targeted on farmers in need. In this post, I want to focus on the changes proposed by the Commission in the way active farmers are defined.

Active farmers in the current Regulation are a sub-set of all farmers. Only active farmers are eligible to receive direct payments (decoupled and coupled payments). While we can use the concept ‘active farmer’ which was introduced in the current CAP Strategic Plans Regulation as a shorthand, its specific implementation has changed in the proposal for the post-2027 CAP.

Active farmers in the CAP Strategic Plan Regulation

Under the current CAP Strategic Plans Regulation, the distinction is made between a farmer and a beneficiary of direct payments.… Read the rest

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Enabling Ukrainian EU membership

For this post, I have used OpenAI’s GPT-5.3 model, May 2026 to help with identifying sources, summarising material, and drafting. The use of large language models in academic and policy-oriented writing remains contested, particularly where issues of authorship, reliability, and originality arise. I have used the model as a research aid rather than a substitute for judgement. Sources identified through the model have been independently checked, and the text has been revised to reflect my own interpretation and emphasis. The purpose of this blog is also partly heuristic: writing serves to organise my own thinking, with the model functioning as a tool in that process. Readers who prefer not to engage with material developed in this way may reasonably choose to look elsewhere, but I hope that the curation, verification, and synthesis undertaken here provide value beyond what a generic model output would deliver. As always, feel free to add your comments to let me know your views on this.… Read the rest

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Assessing the Commission’s CAP proposal: presentation

I was pleased to make a presentation yesterday as part of the series of webinars organised by the European Association of Agricultural Economists for its members, examining the Commission’s proposal for the next CAP. The presentation focused on five topics, recognising that several important issues could not be covered due to time constraints.

The topics were:

•Reflections on the CAP budget in the 2028-2034 period

•Reflections on CAP governance under the Commission proposal

•The future of direct payments

•The future of the CAP’s green architecture

•The future of rural development

My argument on the budget is that it is possible that the overall CAP budget will match the current CAP budget in current prices, as the Commission has argued, but there will be an important redistribution between Member States. This will reflect both their political willingness to transfer additional amounts from their NRP Fund allocation to top up their CAP minimum amounts for income support, but also their structural ability to do so.… Read the rest

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“Europe’s €1.8T budget fight just got real”

Let me make clear immediately that I have taken this headline from an article published in Politico yesterday written by Giorgio Leali and collaborators immediately following the conclusion of the informal summit of EU leaders in Cyprus 23-24 April. The article goes on to identify as a problem: “They still don’t agree on what it should do, how big it should be, or who should pay for it.” This rings very true.

So far, we have just two proposals for the size of the 2028-2034 MFF on the table. The first is that of the Commission. Shortly before the European Union leaders met, the Budget Committee of the European Parliament came up with its Interim Report on the next MFF. This sets out the Parliament’s view on the appropriate size of the next MFF. This will be voted on in plenary by the Parliament on 29 April and, once confirmed (which will almost certainly be the case), the Parliament will be ready to enter into discussions with the Council once it has agreed on its common position.… Read the rest

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Reflections on the future governance of the CAP

On 9 April last I took part in a workshop organised by the Policy Department for Regional Development, Agriculture and Fisheries of the European Parliament on behalf of the Parliament’s Agriculture Committee on “The Multiannual Financial Framework and the Common Agricultural Policy for the period 2028-2034”. Elsa Régnier, a research fellow at the French think tank IDDRI Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales made a presentation on the MFF budgetary implications for the CAP, while my contribution focused on the future governance of the CAP.

The EP Policy Department has made a web page available that summarises the discussion, and which links to the presentations and to the video recording of the event. In this post, I reproduce my opening remarks to the workshop, and conclude with some reflections on the discussion. The opening contributions were limited to 8 minutes and for that reason were limited in the scope of the issues that could be covered.… Read the rest

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The likely size of the CAP budget in the next MFF – reprise

17 March 2026. This post is a revised version of the original post that takes account of some additional information as described in the post.

The likely size of the CAP budget in the next programming period 2028-2034 has been highly contentious since the publication of the Commission’s MFF proposal last July. Among agricultural stakeholders, the AGRI Committee in the Parliament, and the AGRIFISH Council, the amount available for the CAP under its two Pillars in the current programming period was compared with the size of the minimum ring-fenced amount for CAP income support in the proposal and found wanting. The Commission, on the other hand, has insisted on the potential for a larger CAP budget depending on the choices made by Member States. In its most recent Fact Sheet ‘Unlocking synergies integrating EU funding for farming and rural communities’ published in January 2026, it claims “the EU budget in support to farmers and rural communities for 2028-2034 can be at the same level or even higher than the current CAP allocation 2021-2027”.… Read the rest

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Geographical Indications as One Health Instruments

Integrating Results-Based Environmental Payments into the EU Quality Framework

By Pablo Palencia 

Pablo Palencia is a veterinarian and consultant with over 25 years of experience in One Health and agrifood strategy. He served as the Regional Minister for Rural Development, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food in Cantabria, Spain. Throughout his career, he has led the development of strategic projects for cooperatives and the establishment of PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) frameworks, focusing on integrating living heritage and ecosystem services into legal structures to ensure the resilience of livestock production systems.  info@iberap.com

European Geographical Indications (GIs), including Protected Geographical Indications (PGIs), were originally designed to protect product names, prevent imitation and reinforce rural value creation. Today, however, they sit at the intersection of trade policy, sustainability, public health and territorial resilience.

GIs are no longer only internal EU tools. They are already embedded in international trade diplomacy. They are explicitly negotiated in the EU–Mercosur agreement and EU–India trade discussions.… Read the rest