Member states scrap over EU farm aid reform

In a bid to seize the initiative, France and Germany published a joint paper last week outlining their vision for the reformed CAP under the upcoming budgetary period (2014-2020).

While the duo failed to propose a future spending target for the policy that currently takes up roughly 40 percent of the EU budget or €50 billion a year, Paris and Berlin did signal their opposition to an equal per-hectare distribution of subsidies for farmers across the EU.

At present, direct subsidies to farmers vary from over €500 per hectare in Greece to less than €100 in Latvia, a situation defended by Paris and Berlin due to the lower costs faced by farmers in poorer central and eastern European states.

Poland has called for a per-acre distribution of the subsidies however, winning the support of the more-recently-joined member states who accuse older members of an unfair carve-up.

"The Franco-German position is a very conservative one," Poland's agriculture and development minister Marek Sawicki told reporters. "It defends the interests of their farmers, but not of farmers from other member states."

Mr Sawicki added that the joint paper from Paris and Berlin was "a rather unsuccessful attempt to exert pressure on other member states."

Cutting the CAP

Others at the meeting, notably the UK, are in favour of reducing the CAP's overall budget in order to free up money for other areas, and agree with Poland that France and Germany can no longer dominate the policy's direction as has happened in the past.

"It's very different now with the Lisbon Treaty and co-decision making with the European Parliament," said UK farm minister Caroline Spelman. "It's much harder, even if you're two big states out of the 27, you can't dictate terms."

Britain's conservative leader David Cameron has also made it clear that London is not prepared to give up its EU budgetary rebate, an issue closely linked to CAP reform.

The European Commission is set to come forward with draft ideas on the future shape of the bloc's agricultural policy on 17 November of this year, before publishing concrete legislative proposals in July 2011.

While bitter discussions on the size and distribution of the CAP's budget tend to dominate negotiations, talk of "greening" the policy and the provision of "public goods" has increasingly entered the debate.

As a result, the future policy is likely to place a greater emphasis on the role farmers can play in tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, as well as the need to preserve water and soil quality.