At the meeting of the "High Level Group on Administrative Burden Reduction in Europe" held in Brussels on Tuesday, Federal Agriculture Minister Aigner called for a reduction of bureaucracy to the absolute minimum required in the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
"What we do not need is more avoidable red tape, but we must simplify the enforcement of rules especially for farmers and administrations. Unnecessary bureaucracy is a waste of valuable resources, it lowers the acceptance of EU agricultural policy in society and results in a loss of transparency while rendering, in addition, the European farming sector less competitive on the world stage", Aigner stated at the meeting headed by the Chairman of the High Level Group, Dr. Edmund Stoiber, that EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos also attended. Stoiber decided to hold the meeting in order to emphasise the necessary administrative simplification with a view to the forthcoming CAP reform.
Minister Aigner stated that, while some progress has been made in the past on the debureaucratisation in the CAP, the current proposals made by the European Commission were not in line with the objective of simplification. "With regard to EU direct payments, there is, at present, just one single premium in Germany that is, moreover, fully decoupled. This means that: unlike most other EU states, we have stopped supporting production in favour of promoting land management only. I expect the other EU states to follow suit as soon as possible." Germany differs significantly from its Western neighbours on another point, too: "From 2013 onwards, a single amount per hectare of arable land and grassland will be paid in Germany per federal state. It couldn't be simpler", stressed Aigner. In contrast, the European Commission had proposed a total of six premium components for the period beyond 2014. "It is clear that this would mean a huge additional burden - both for farmers and for the public sector. This is intolerable. When reforming the CAP, we must therefore bear in mind that the implementation should be as unbureaucratic as possible", said the Minister.
The Minister also believes that there is significant room for improvement on the issue of the so-called greening: "We support the Commission in pursuing the objective of strengthening environmental services. However, greening must not cause a significant additional administrative burden.
We have missed the target if, in the end, only bureaucracy blossoms and if nothing comes out of it for nature and the environment." Aigner also takes a critical view of the European Commission proposals on the capping of EU direct payments to certain large-scale farming operations and on the scheme for the "active farmer". These plans, too, would mean more bureaucracy: "We need to take a critical look at what the required capping would achieve at the final count. Out of approx. 3000 large-scale farms in Germany to be checked, less than 100 are actually likely to be concerned. In addition, this proposal would cause an immense bureaucratic burden, not least as a result of taking labour costs into account as proposed."
The Minister welcomes the concessions made by the European Commission on some de-minimis arrangements in the agricultural sector of the EU, the proposed cutback in on-the-spot checks under certain conditions and a lightening of the workload, in some aspects, in the field of cross-compliance. While this would contribute to simplification, it falls a long way short of what is required in order to offset the additional red tape to be faced by farmers, in particular. "We need to step up our efforts. European farmers are waiting impatiently for the European Commission to present effective proposals for simplification. We want an agricultural policy that focuses more strongly on environmental and nature conservation. What is very important to me in all this is that an unavoidable additional burden is being offset elsewhere because our farmers and also administrations need less and not more bureaucracy.”
