A new report examining member states’ climate and environment ambitions under the CAP 2021-2027 assessed whether their strategic plans provide a sound basis for meeting the policy objective of a greener CAP.
Overall, the report concluded the plans are greener than in the previous CAP period, but do not match the EU’s ambitions for climate and the environment, and key elements for assessing green performance are missing.
The report looked at four countries, including Ireland, where it found our Eco Schemes were mostly a continuation of existing green farming practices.
Under the current CAP, some 25pc of all farmers’ direct payments have been reallocated to the new Eco Schemes payment. “In Ireland, for Eco Schemes, we saw that these were not targeted, so much in the sense that 91pc of farmers in Ireland were already eligible from the start,” the ECA’s Kristian Sniter told a press briefing.
“So the farmers will receive a payment without changing the practice and without being more ambitious. That was a weakness we also found in France where 99pc of farmers were already eligible without changing practices.
“We also saw in the livestock sectors, there were difficulties to implement measures. The Commission asked when it reviewed the Irish plan to have more measures for livestock and the dairy sector — the reply from Ireland was that it had its own national plans, which we cannot audit and neither the Commission.
“That’s a lost opportunity. They had the chance to use CAP funds to support the sector’s transition to a more climate-friendly approach, but this was not used.”
The audit team highlights the Commission took the view that the actions in Ireland’s plan to cope with the dairy sector’s pressure on the environment and the climate might not be sufficient.
Ireland referred to several complementary national initiatives to address these issues, such as those included in the Climate Action Plan.
The ECA also criticised Ireland’s ambitions to restore and protect peatlands.
“There are new rules to maintain and protect peatlands, which will be implemented with some delay in Ireland. What we regret is there is no effort to restore peatlands,” Sniter said.
“Where peatlands had been transformed into agricultural land, to go back and restore them as carbon sinks and to promote biodiversity, there was no effort on this.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-30 17:30:00
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