The last meeting of the Civil Dialogue Group on Rural development was organised on 20th November 2020. During this meeting Dominique Fayel Vice-President of Euromontana was elected as Chair of the Civil Dialogue Group on Rural Development. With his two vice-chairs, Mr Hartmut Berndt from ELARD and Ms Cristina Tinelli from COPA, they will be notably in charge of defining the agenda of future meetings.
Discussions during the Civil Dialogue Group focused on the CAP reform. Gregorio Dávila Diaz, Deputy Head of Unit F1 (Conception and consistency of rural development) – DG AGRI has given an update on the reform process. He explained the positions of the Council and the European Parliament while commenting on the position of the European Commission.
Mr Davila Diaz specifically explained the positions of the Council on the following issues:
- Environment issues (such as the introduction of ring-fencing for eco-schemes or the inclusion of ANC payments within the 30% of EAFRD ring-fencing, tendency to maintain the status quo for conditionality of payments);
- the new delivery model (such as suggestions to reduce the controls of the Commission to two per programme period instead of annual controls suggested by the EC);
- Rural development (such as the introduction of the possibility to revise the ANC delimitation, the reintegration of land purchase, integration of some large-scale investments outside LEADER, voluntary rather than compulsory risk management and adding further details regarding cooperation for LEADER);
- Financial management (such as the co-funding rates or introducing ring-fencing for young farmers);
- Governance (such as adding the possibility to have more than 1 CAP Strategic Plan (CSP) per Member State (MS), reducing the approval of CSP from 8 to 6 months).
The speaker also explained the position of the European Parliament on environmental issues (such as the introduction of a number of ring-fencing schemes), addition of a negative list of investments and the possible adoption of regional intervention programmes, increasing the number of measures from 8 to 10; introducing a social conditionality or a new economic scheme for boosting competitiveness and making the Smart Villages measure compulsory.
In terms of timeline, the trialogues have begun and should be finalised by April / May 2021 prior to the adoption of regulations by the summer followed by the delegated acts. The submission of CSP should be made by late 2021. During this meeting, other interesting points were presented on the transition period, the long-term vision for rural areas or the future CAP network. For more information, please see the slides from the meeting.
30 November 2020
