PARTICIPATION AND NATURE THE BIG ABSENTEES
Rete Semi Rurali, of which WWOOF Italy is a member, has endorsed the Press Release that a congruous number of organizations launched this morning to highlight the short-sightedness of the recent DM, packaged in defiance of the most basic rules of democratic participation established by the European Commission. It is not only the attempts to circumvent the rules on TEA/New Genomic Techniques that we should be concerned about.
| PAC STRATEGIC PLAN AMENDMENTS: PARTICIPATION AND NATURE THE BIG ABSENTEES Minister Lollobrigida’s Decree to implement CAP reform penalizes the most virtuous farmers who want to invest in nature conservation and ignores European Union rules for participatory processes in the management of CAP public funds 12 associations write to ministers of agriculture and environment Twelve Associations (AIAB, AIDA, CIWF, Being Animals, Greenpeace Italy, Legambiente, Lipu, ISDE, Pro Natura, Rural Seeds Network, Terra!, WWF Italy), sent to the Ministers of Agriculture and Environment a letter with a comment paper to the Ministerial Decree of June 28, 2024, by which the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry implemented EU Regulation 2024/1468 of May 14, 2024, which amended the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that came into effect in January 2023.With these amendments, the European Union, on the eve of the vote for the European Parliament, wanted to give an easy answer to farmers’ protests, in fact only reducing the biodiversity and climate protection objectives in the CAP. In implementing this reform, the Ministry led by Francesco Lollobrigida, has made maximum use of the wide margins of discretion granted, impoverishing the already meager environmental ambitions of the CAP 2023-2027 National Strategic Plan (NSP), penalizing precisely those more virtuous farmers who intend to invest in the future of their farms by prioritizing the protection of biodiversity and soil fertility. In fact, the possibility is introduced for farms to apply crop diversification and not rotation, which instead allows for a preservation of soil fertility, so much so that it is one of the key principles of organic and agroecological farming. In addition, to compensate for the elimination of the 4 percent natural area requirement in arable land, the decree does not introduce a new voluntary commitment for farmers for environmental and climate protection (Eco-scheme), as required by the EU regulation, but amends the existing Eco-scheme 5 dedicated to pollinator measures, reducing its potential as it keeps the budget unchanged. The Ministerial Decree also gives farmers the compensatory payment per hectare for dedicated biodiversity protection areas up to a maximum area of 4 percent. “In practice,” say the 12 associations, ” if a virtuous farmer wants to invest a greater percentage of his agricultural area in the creation of hedges, groves, small wetlands, or simply to leave the soil fallow so as to promote its fertility, he will only receive a payment on the first 4 percent of the committed agricultural area. “ The contents of the decree unfortunately confirm Minister Lollobrigida’s lack of foresight and his aversion to measures aimed at protecting nature. We are faced with a short-sighted ideological choice that harms farmers, the environment and the very food safety of consumers.The 12 Associations have, therefore, with a document of comments to the MASAF Decree. relaunched a new proposal, already made during the preparation of the SPP, to include a new Eco-scheme dedicated to payments for agricultural areas returned to nature on up to 10 percent of the land, consistent with the goal indicated by the European and National Biodiversity Strategies 2030 and in coherence with the approval on June 17 of the European Nature Restoration Law, which in Art. 11 includes commitments to the renaturalization of agricultural areas. The 12 Associations also pointed out the lack of involvement of the social partners in this amendment process. “Despite the fact that in the “considered” in the preface to the ministerial text there is talk of “adequate and widespread information addressed to the stakeholders involved in the actions covered by this decree,” none of our Associations has ever received a request for comment, let alone a meeting.” denounce the twelve Associations. As of the date of the publication of the Decree, the Ministry of Agriculture has, in fact, not provided any prior information to stakeholders, despite the fact that in the 33 days between the publication of Regulation 2024/1468 (May 14, 2024) and the publication of the Decree (June 28, 2024) there would have been plenty of time to communicate the approach of the Decree and gather any comments and input. While general stakeholders were excluded, only a few agricultural associations were instead heard (as usual), as evidenced by Coldiretti’s publication “Where the CAP is Going: Italy’s PSP 2023-2027, First Year of Implementation,” which previews the contents of the Decree and data on the first year of implementation of the CAP’s National Strategic Plan, never officially released by MASAF even to the members of the Plan’s Monitoring Committee. The failure to involve all stakeholders and the lack of information on the implementation of the PSP is a clear violation of EU rules for CAP management. “The application of the CAP and the consequent use of public funds,” the 12 Associations reiterate to Ministers Lollobrigida and Pichetto Fratin, “are not and should not be the exclusive interest of the Agricultural Associations, but a common interest of all citizens and civil society Associations representing widespread public interests such as environmental, climate and health protection.” Rome, July 30, 2024The 12 Associations sending this communiqué represent a broad alliance that shared analysis and comments on the 2023-2027 CAP National Strategic Plan. The 12 Associations (AIAB, AIDA, CIWF Italy, Being Animals, Greenpeace, ISDE Doctors for the Environment, Legambiente, Lipu-BirdLife, Pro Natura, Rural Seeds Network, Terra! and WWF Italy) share a vision of an ecological transition in Italian and European agriculture that protects all farmers, citizens and the environment. |
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