PURPLE has taken the opportunity to respond to an European Commission (EC) questionnaire recently published as part of a wider consultation exercise on ‘modernising and simplifying the common agricultural policy (CAP)’. The EC’s stated goal for this consultation exercise is to “summarise available evidence on the performance of the CAP so far, draw lessons from the implementation of the latest reform, have a structured dialogue, confirm what the current difficulties are, and anticipate needs for modernisation and simplification of the CAP”.
Whilst PURPLE welcomed the consultation it found that the territorial dimension was largely absent from the exercise and argued that this was a fundamental issue and that, for example, there are particular challenges and opportunities for peri-urban agriculture and other land-uses which need to be recognised and allowed for. The same applies to remote or mountainous regions and other different type ofterritory where it is the character of the territory per se that brings particular opportunities and challenges. In this sense PURPLE has pointed out that it regards the current policy as ‘place blind’.
In its response, PURPLE also stressed that the focus of the exercise was very much on agriculture and that such a strong sectoral focus meant that the exercise suffered from being framed in a way that did not reflect Commissioner Hogan’s stated desire that ”… we keep considering our rural policy as an integrated part of the Common Agricultural Policy and that we strengthen the links between the territorial and the sectorial aspects of this policy rather than weaken them”. This being exactly the point he had expressed to PURPLE in an earlier written exchange with PURPLE President, Mrs Helyn Clack.
When asked whether there was a need to add objectives for a modernised CAP, it was argued that we don’t necessarily need to add new objectives but that the objectives need to be reframed. PURPLE suggested that achieving a balanced territorial development – one of a list of stated possible objectives that respondents were invited to select as priorities in the consultation exercise – was an overarching framework within which all other elements should then be fitted in the most efficient way. PURPLE believes that, by suggesting that balanced territorial development is one of a number of items to be considered in parallel, the consultation exercise ran the risk of the very decoupling of the territorial and sectoral policy dimensions that the Commissioner is keen to avoid.
PURPLE sees balanced territorial development (once clearly defined) as a core objective that needs to be recognised. In this context, it suggests that it would be sensible to have in mind here a balance between both different sorts of territory: urban, peri-urban, rural, and between different thematic considerations: economic, environmental, andsocial. From that starting point other vital considerations and issues can be made to orbit.
Alongside its response to the questionnaire, PURPLE President, Mrs Helyn Clack, submitted an open letter offering further details of the PURPLE stance and expanding on points that she felt could not been made through the format of the questionnaire. A key message in this open letter is that balanced territorial development across Europe should be the starting point for any consideration of rural policy alongside (as opposed to within) Common Agricultural Policy. Mrs Clack’s letter can be downloaded here.
The European Commission plans to communicate the results of the questionnaire at a public conference on 7 July 2017, with a summary to be published online and intends to take the outcome of the consultation into account in its forthcoming Communication on "Modernising and Simplifying the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)".
