The European Commission today approved the proposal to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The aim is to modify the criteria for assigning direct payments to farmers, standardizing them throughout the EU on the basis of aid per hectare. Until now, the yardstick was that of payments proportional to the "historical production" of each company, according to the system still applied today in some member countries (including Italy).
The new system will be introduced gradually, between 2014 and 2020, so that countries in which the level of aid per hectare is higher than 90% of the Community average (less than 300 euros per hectare), payments are reduced approach that threshold. For Italy, which in 2014 will be above the level of 400 euros per hectare, this will mean a reduction of around 6% in the total amount of direct payments, equivalent to around 285 million a year in 2020. 30% of EU funding allocated to each Member State for the CAP is to be used for environmental and climate measures.
