Commission to revisit CAP greening rules

The rules came into force last year. Agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan has pledged to simplify things where he can and, to inform those efforts, the Commission has launched an online consultation seeking experiences from the first 12 months.

Gail Soutar, the NFU’s chief economics and international affairs adviser, said: “The NFU welcomes the Commission’s efforts to simplify the CAP rules. Overly burdensome regulation and specifically CAP reform are consistently cited by our members as having the biggest negative impact on business confidence.

“The new rules were introduced with very little time for farmers to prepare and in many cases guidance was changing throughout the application window.

"The full impact of that is only now being felt as farmers face late payments and in some cases reductions in the value of their payments due to errors and mistakes being identified."

The NFU has previously identified a number of measures that should be taken to simplify the CAP, including for greening. We will make sure that these are drawn to the attention of the Commission and will push for their inclusion in a package of technical amendments expected to be published in the summer of 2016.

We will respond on behalf of members to the consultation and will also be encouraging members to send their responses to the European Commission directly.

Mr Hogan will present a package of changes on greening rules before the summer of 2016. Any changes should then be applicable from the 2017 claim year.