The League for the Protection of Nature (LPN) considers that, with the new European Budget, "the green mask of the CAP" falls, the Common Agricultural Policy.
It is because, defends the oldest Portuguese environmental association in a statement, «the environmental measures within the CAP (known as 'greening'), which had been guaranteed by the European Parliament, were finally changed until their total decharacterization, constituting another form of injecting money into unsustainable forms of agriculture».
Furthermore, "at the end of the negotiations for the European budget, the funds for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) were cut by around 15% for Portugal".
LPN considers this to be “the worst of both worlds, with a smaller budget that is intended to promote more wasteful practices that are harmful to Europe”.
According to the association, "it remains, as a last resort, for the European Parliament to take a stand in the face of this debacle which, if it materializes, will in no way help the development of sustainable agriculture for the future in Europe."
The LPN also draws attention to the fact that "one of the biggest and unexpected cuts in this European Budget", which was "the cut in the environmental component of the CAP".
"Funding for the CAP towards a more rational and sustainable rural development (2nd pillar) will be effectively depleted through the possibility of transferring 15 to 25% of the budget from the second pillar to the first (direct aid to production), through the reverse modulation'.
In this way, the association guarantees, "Member States can decide to place these funds in direct payments from the first pillar for productive activities that are more harmful and aggressive to the environment".
The 'final blow' given to a green CAP reform came with the 'agreement that Member States can interpret what a “green” CAP means, opening the door to an unprecedented laundering operation”.
“The Heads of State even described in detail how they would abolish measures such as Areas of Ecological Interest (EFA) at farm level, stipulating that they could not “require farmers to reduce production areas”. Thus, they decided that 'greening' and EFA cannot have an impact on production or income, limiting them only to the maintenance of landscape elements», criticizes the LPN.
The environmental organization concludes that now it only remains “to hope that the only institution of the European Union elected by its population, the European Parliament, refuses, as it guaranteed, to ratify a European Budget and a CAP that go against the interests of Europe”.
"This new CAP, now proposed, will only serve to perpetuate discrepancies between Member States without bringing any long-term sustainability value."
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