Tuesday, May 26, Kaspars Gerhards, the Minister for Agriculture, during a video call with Julia Klöckner, German Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture, will discuss a negative impact of Covid-19 on the sector of agriculture and possibilities to lessen the consequences as well as focus on the future of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2020. In the second half of 2020, Germany will hold Presidency of the EU Council and one of its tasks will be to carry through the EU CAP 2020-2027 to the final solution.
Kaspars Gerhards, the Minister for Agriculture, holds a view that the European Commission (COM) needs to pay more attention to protection of the EU producers and enterprises by giving preference on the EU market to goods produced in EU and not imported ones that would constitute a considerable support for local food producers and farmers. Besides, in current circumstances, when the sector has been negatively affected by Covid-19, reduction of the budget for CAP 202-2027 is unacceptable as proposed by COM.
Kaspars Gerhards, the Minister for Agriculture, emphasized that upon increasing of the environmental and climate requirements, EU must provide an adequate funding for implementation of these requirements instead of accomplishing these targets at the expense of farmers. The more so, Latvia considers that implementation of the stringent environmental and climate requirements must be postponed until EU agriculture recovers from the crisis caused by Covid-19. Just as to equalize direct payments for all the Member States to ensure equal competition conditions for all the EU Member States.
Germany also states that CAP budget for 2020-2027 must be maintained at the present level. Taking into account Covid-19 crisis, Germany considers that the new CAP reform will start functioning only in 2023 therefore there must be a two-year transition period to ensure a continuity of direct payments and programs of other funds. Moreover, upon implementation of the European Green Deal, new environmental and climate requirements, CAP budget will have to provide more funding to compensate the higher requirements for agriculture.