Open letter: Civil Society alarmed by the prospect of regressive Common Agricultural Policy reform
Dear Member of the European Parliament,
We are writing to you to address the way the current reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been managed by the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI).
The future of European agricultural and food policies is a societal issue that concerns us all. The majority of AGRI MEPs have ignored citizens’ calls and have failed to ensure that their concerns are fairly represented. This comes as a major disappointment to European citizens who had hoped that increased power to the European Parliament would close, rather than increase, the democratic gap the EU is facing.
The CAP is in crisis: the bulk of its considerable budget is distributed unfairly between farmers, with no clear policy objective in mind, while only small amounts support sustainable farming and rural areas. Instead, subsidies have driven, and continue to support, unhealthy and environmentally damaging approaches to farming and land management, poor animal welfare conditions and hindering the development of agriculture in developing countries. The public has repeatedly voiced these concerns but so far they have largely been ignored (a 2011 Eurobarometer shows that 77% of European citizens want more environmental conditionality attached to CAP subsidies)….