Tuesday, May 14, K. Gerhards, the Minister for Agriculture, will participate in the meeting of the EU Council of Minister for Agriculture and Fishery, in Brussels, where Member States will continue debating the issue, most topical on the agenda, the future of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2020.
K. Gerhards, the Minister: “Latvia is not supporting such a considerable reduction in the EU CAP budget as proposed by the European Commission. For us, it is important to maintain an effective and strong CAP after 2020, ensuring fair and equal support measures and competition conditions for all the EU farmers, including fair direct payments, ensuring an average level of direct payments for Latvia in the next period. We are also objecting to reduction in funding for rural development in Latvia – the funding for agriculture in the period 2021 – 2027 must be retained at least at the current level.”
The Minister for Agriculture is pointing out that in the next period, CAP implementation must be simpler and more efficient and still without reducing the funding of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural development (EAFRD) from 85 to 70% as proposed by the European Commission.