You don’t sell your foundations to improve the roof – McEntee

A proposal to cut the budget for the next CAP by 5% was strongly rejected by Minister of State for European Affairs Helen McEntee in Luxembourg.

European Ministers met on Tuesday 9 April to discuss the financing of the EU’s budget for the next seven years including the CAP.

European Commissioner responsible for budgets, Günther Oettinger told ministers that it was simply not realistic to have no cuts to the agricultural policy if the UK left the EU.

Minister McEntee disagreed in light of the increasing demands on farmers to do more than produce food. She echoed an earlier analogy saying: “If we are to change or improve a roof, we don’t fund it by selling our foundations, we simply raise more money.”

Contributions

McEntee said Ireland was willing to contribute more money to the overall EU budget but only if it was spent in areas that “contribute to the advancement of the European ideal”. CAP was identified as one of those ideals.

Commissioner Oettinger had earlier told ministers that agriculture was one of the main pillars of European policy, accounting for roughly a third of the overall budget. Europe’s cohesion budget is the second main pillar and accounts for a further 33% of funds.

However, Oettinger outlined that the EU would have a third main pillar which combined all other programmes particularly in new spending areas such as research and security.

Cuts

He said avoiding cuts to the cohesion and agriculture budgets would result in a massacre of funding for the third pillar.

For this reason, cuts in these areas to the benefit of the other two was not something the Commission favoured.

In her address to the gathering, Minister McEntee said the adverse impact of Brexit meant it was crucial to provide funding for the CAP.

She believed the Commission’s ambitious proposals to modernise, simplify and reduce administrative burden in the next farm policy could not be realised without an adequate budget.

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