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Agenda 2000 - Agriculture -

Environment Agriculture should support environment and rural jobs

November 13, 1997

Farming Fields Brussels, Belgium - Europe's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) should create jobs in rural areas and nurture a healthy environment instead of simply compensating farmers for reform-related cuts in prices, WWF-World Wide Fund For Nature urged today.

WWF's call comes just ahead of a Farm Minister's meeting next Monday (17 November) where recommendations on the European Commission's Agenda 2000 for far-reaching agricultural reform are due to be finalised. WWF is alarmed at signs that ministers' proposals continue to leave the environment at the periphery of the CAP.

WWF's new position paper* on CAP reform calls for the phasing out of direct compensatory payments to farmers by 2006. The savings would be used to fund agri-environmental and sustainable rural development programmes. In the interim, all direct payments to farmers should be made conditional on their meeting basic environmental standards.

"The system of direct compensatory payments is too generous and will become increasingly unacceptable both to European taxpayers as well as our trading partners. Farmers should be under no illusion that such support can last," says Natacha Yellachich, WWF's Agriculture Policy coordinator. "Instead, this money should support the environment and sustainable development of rural areas."

Under WWF's proposals, the EU should have shifted 25% of the CAP guarantee budget (which amounts to ECU 13 bn per year) to agri-environmental measures and 50% to sustainable rural development by 2006.

The current CAP review, designed to accommodate EU budget demands, enlargement and WTO trade pressure, comes 40 years after the policy's creation as a guarantor of European food production. While it can be said to have achieved its primary goal, success has come at the expense of great environmental damage including species lost, habitats ruined and water supplies contaminated.

*You can order"Agenda 2000 - WWF's first reactions to the CAP reform proposals" from Florence Danthine, WWF , +32 2 743 8800 (available in Engslish and German).

CONTACT:
Martin Hiller, WWF European Policy Office, Tel +32 2 743 8806