Imperative to stop damage from the CAP on developing countries

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EU has to be reformed in 2013. The draft legal proposals have been launched by European Commission (EC) on the 12th of October 2011.

A broad range of organisations working towards a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable food system, calls for food sovereignty. AEFJN joined them to call for European agricultural policy that is equitable for food and agriculture challenge in Africa too.

The European Commission option

The EC has clearly indicated it is in favour of global competitiveness of European agriculture. This is meant to ensure that prices of agricultural commodities produced in Europe are low enough to enable the European Food Processing and Exporting industry to compete in the global food market. By this, CAP will have negative impact on the world’s poorest and most food insecure people. This comes at a time when the ongoing hunger, economic and climate crises clearly demonstrate the failure of the current international agricultural market architecture to guarantee global food security. The EU has a special responsibility to help the transition of vulnerable developing countries towards meeting the food rights of their own people. This entails a fundamental recognition that world hunger does not legitimise subsidized European exports and that developing countries must be allowed to develop and safeguard their domestic production.

 

The civil society option

An increasing number of social movements and civil society organisations in Europe proposed another option that will truly address today’s food and agriculture challenges– in Europe and globally.  Theses organizations favour a fourth - a MISSING - option proposed in a document that AEFJN signed too.

This option puts the following goals at core of the future CAP: access to healthy food for all, stable and just incomes for farmers, stable and fair prices for consumers, ecologically sustainable forms of production, decreasing emissions of greenhouse gasses- GHGs- (global warming) and reducing the use of fossil fuels, and an end to destroying domestic markets for local producers in the Global South as a result of dumping.

 

(Source: FoodSovCAP Paper and European Food Declaration)

 

To read more on the Fourth option final : http://www.nyelenieurope.net/foodsovcap/downloads-a-media/item/fourth-option-final

 

To read the European Food declaration http://www.europeanfooddeclaration.org/declaration/en

 

To know more on the European Food declaration, see video The missing option...Food Sovereignty

 

Extract of the commentary by the European movement for Food Sovereignty and another Common Agricultural Policy (FoodSovCAP) on the CAP post 2013 legislative proposals:

4. Imperative to stop the CAP damaging livelihoods and the food system in developing countries

 

Last year’s debate on the CAP reform revealed widespread support in the European Parliament, including considerations for the future CAP regime’s impact on the world’s poorest and most food insecure people^[8]. Regrettably, these demands were ignored in the Commission’s legislative proposals of 12 Oct. 2011, in which the Lisbon Treaty legislative provision of Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) was dropped. This comes at a time when the ongoing hunger, economic and climate crises clearly demonstrate the failure of the current international agricultural market architecture to guarantee global food security. As the largest agricultural trading block, the EU has a special responsibility to help the transition of vulnerable developing countries towards meeting the food rights of their own people. This requires a fundamental recognition that world hunger does not legitimise subsidized European exports and that developing countries must be allowed to develop and safeguard their domestic production.

 

There should be a formal reference to the PCD principle and to the obligation under article 208 of the Lisbon Treaty, in the relevant new CAP legislative texts. The article states that the EU “shall take account of the objectives of development cooperation in the policies that it implements…”

 

The new CAP legislation should contain obligations to monitor the impacts of CAP on food security and agriculture in developing countries on an ongoing basis. It should refer to all the relevant stakeholders and especially family farmers’ organisations from developing countries. In case of incoherence with development issues, corrective actions must be decided upon.

In the EU’s development policy approach, the new EU Food Security Policy Framework^[9], adopted in 2010, already “acts as a priority benchmark/indicator for PCD” in the Commission’s work on Food Security. Consequently, the Food Security Policy Framework should also be the benchmark for reference for PCD in the CAP legislative text.

 

The EU should use the CAP to drive a transition to sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture in Europe, and, since the CAP invariably influences agricultural practices and agricultural research and land use changes in other countries, will thus contribute to this transition worldwide.

 

We request the Commission, Council and Parliament to take their responsibility and amend the proposals according to the comments and proposals described above.

5th of March 2012

 

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