Following last year's meeting the Groupe de Bruges has put its analysis and recommendations concerning the legislative proposals of the Commission on the new Common Agricultural Policy into written form. The paper was handed to Commissioner Ciolos personally on January 26 by GdB president Arie van den Brand.

The full text of the position paper can be downloaded HERE
The text of the press release can be downloaded HERE
The full texts of the legislative proposals of the Commission can be downloaded HERE.

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For over 50 years, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been one of the most important and truly common policies in the European Union. Currently, a new reform of the CAP is under way in a turbulent period of the European Union.
 Groupe de Bruges, in collaboration with SPERA (Interuniversity Centre for Studies on Economic, Rural and Environmental Policies) and Associazione Alessandro Bartola, is developing a comprehensive e-learning course on the CAP. 
This is your chance to learn about the CAP or to bring your knowledge up to date in an easy, accessible manner.
Numerous leading experts from all over Europe contribute their knowledge and expertise to this course. 
The course is intended for first year students and everybody else that has a professional interest in the Common Agricultural Policy.

A presentation of the E-Learning course on the Common Agricultural Policy (EL-CAP) was given on October 15th in Verseg-Fenyőharaszt, Hungary that was also transmitted live by webstreaming.

You can either follow one or more of the course’s 8 modules or follow the whole course. In the latter case, you will be able to obtain an official certificate.
For more information download the brochure HERE.
As of now seven of the eight modules of the course are available. To go to the course, click

User guide available HERE.

Thanks to contributions by the European Commission and the Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer the course is free of charge.

This project has been made financially possible through contributions by:

European Commission, grant agreement number 2011-0098

The sole responsibility of the course lies with the Groupe de Bruges. Neither the European Commission nor the Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

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Last week some 25 members of the Groupe de Bruges gathered in Verseg-Fenyőharaszt, Hungary to discuss the legislative proposals on the post 2013 Common Agricultural Policy that were presented by the European Commission on October 12.
The in depth analysis of the proposals are currently being processed into a short position paper, that will be presented to the Commission, other European institutions and stakeholder organisations at the beginning of November.

In the Publications section of our website, all eight draft regulations on the new CAP can be found as well as first reactions of main stakeholders -> click HERE.

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ARC 2020, the alliance of civil society organisations from across Europe has pressed decision-makers to show courage in reforming the Common Agriculture Policy. At its European Conference which took place on 13 July at the Economic and Social Committee in Brussels, ARC members discussed CAP reform perspectives with Commissioner Dacian Ciolos, the President of the Council of Ministers Marek Sawicki and the rapporteur of the European Parliament Albert Dess.
Referring to the "Communication of civil society to the European Institutions", which ARC 2020 had published on 19 November last year, in parallel with the European Commission, spokesperson Arie van den Brand said: " We believe that our voice has been heard since the consultation of civil society started last year, - at least that we agree on the challenges we all face and the radical changes needed to respond to climate change, biodiversity loss and gross social disparities in European regions and the world. Now European decision makers must show the courage to work towards long-sighted policy change. The new CAP must address how truly sustainable farm and food systems will be introduced in the field, how markets can work better to offer farmers a fair income and give consumers healthy food. We need a real paradigm shift which ends the current unsustainable use of natural resources, moves towards solar based farming, reduces land use abroad for animal feed production in order to offer sufficient food for all in a long term perspective. And we need rural renaissance through a specific and inclusive rural policy which strengthens local
governance and innovation in all regions of Europe"

The official press release of ARC 2020 can be found HERE

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On April 8th Groupe de Bruges, in collaboration with the MSc Programme "Integrated rural development and management of rural space" of the Agricultural University of Athens, organised an international conference on the CAP reform entitled: "The Dilemmas of the CAP reform. Between competitiveness and public goods: can farmers deliver both?”. The conference was held in the library on the University’s campus ground.           

The conference was made possible through financial support of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality.

The conference was attended by over 100 participants. Another 100 or so people followed the conference through the simultaneous web streaming. The conference brought to the public spotlight some of the key issues of the current CAP reform process such as the role of farmers in delivering public goods and the involvement of civil society in the consultation and decision making process. First speaker, professor Franco Sotte, Vice-President of Groupe de Bruges, made very clear that 20 years of CAP reforms had done very little to change the distribution of CAP payments between farmers, regions and Member States.

Among the key note speakers present at the conference were Allan Buckwell (Policy Director for the Country, Land and Business Association) ,Samuel Feret (ARC 2020/Groupe de Bruges), Jenna Hegarty (Birdlife International), Jan Gerrit Deelen (Representative of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation and Agriculture) with Arie van den Brand, president of Groupe de Bruges, and prof. Demetrios Damianos, from the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of AUA, as moderators of the conference sessions.

The conference was web streamed via the site www.ruraldevelopment.aua.gr.

The conference was followed by three workshops on three of the main topics in the current CAP Reform: one workshop focussed on competitiveness and sustainability in food production, in the second the delivery of public goods was discussed while the third workshop engaged itself in the theme of territorial balance and rural development.

All presentations and reports can be downloaded here:

Presentation Franco Sotte, Groupe de Bruges

Presentation Stathis Klonaris/Sotiris Koutsomitros, Agricultural University of Athens

Presentation Samuel Ferèt, Agricultural and Rural Convention

Presentation Jenny Hegarty, Birdlife International

Presentation Athanassios Kampas/George Vlahos, Agricultural University of Athens

Presentation Allan Buckwell

Presentation Lampros Lamprinakis

Presentation Jan Gerrit Deelen, Observations from the debate

Report workshop 1, How can European agriculture become both competitive and sustainable? What role for the CAP?

Report workshop 2, How can the CAP support the provision of public goods?

Report workshop 3, How can Rural Development Policy contribute to territorial balance and the achievement of the EU2020 objectives?

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In 2010, Groupe de Bruges and Forum Synergies launched ARC 2020, the Agricultural and Rural Convention, as a civil society initiative in the CAP post 2013 reform process started by the European Commission.

ARC 2020 proved itself to be a strong voice for civil society organizations, making a mark in the European arena. After an "initiation" at the EC "CAP post 2013" conference in July 2010 where the ARC presence was overwhelming, ARC 2020 organized a debate in early November discussing its Communication of the future of the Common Agricultural Policy. The final Communication was presented to the Commissioner of Agriculture and Rural Development Dacian Ciolos and Paolo Castro, President of the EP, ComAgri, on November 18^th.

Translation on the final Communication of ARC 2020 can be found on the Arc website in 9 languages (with more coming soon), while the Communication Summary can be found in 10 official languages.

ARC 2020 is now planning a new conference on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy beyond 2013 for May 2011 and awaits support for all individuals and organizations. This can be given by signing the ARC 2020 Communication directly on the website.

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The current version of the CAP runs until 2013 but, if there is to be no agreement on reform until that year, it could run on for at least another year.

At the European Parliament the Committee on Agriculture is examining 1300 amendments which were tabled on the Dess report. Negotiations on possible compromises will take place in Strasbourg on April 5^th. Votes in the committee are scheduled for May 2^nd, while votes in the plenary session are scheduled for the first week of June.

The problem of Parliamentarians finding compromises is not the number of amendments, but the fact that political groups have tabled amendments following different structures of reform proposals, in some cases completely re-writing the report. The challenge is to find a new, common structure which leads to a coherent message of the Parliament. Staff and MEPs of ComAgri will have to sort this out now.

While there is a will to figure it out, the main challenge of the reform process, according to MEP George Lyon, is that both in the European Parliament and in the ComAgri there are fundamental disagreements regarding two key issues: direct payments and the greening of the CAP. While most don`t see an "official" problem, a fairer distribution of direct payments is the main debate on the CAP these days. Old Member States like France or Germany say that, with a tight CAP budget, that is likely to become even tighter, they don`t want to equalize the level of payments with new Member States such as Hungary or Romania.

The European Commission seems to be the more creative force for the reform presently.

A letter from the three Commissioners responsible for agriculture, climate change and environment, underlining the need for greening the CAP was an important sign. In parallel, the commissioner for regional and cohesion policy is working on rural/urban programming with a new LEADER/URBAN type of programmes. Local and sub-regional development programming seems to play an important role in inter-service consultations.

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