Eastern EU countries call for fair CAP

The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should be fair and simpler in order to guarantee comparable conditions for all farmers and food producers in the EU. This is a common stance by the representatives of agricultural chambers from the Visegrad Four (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria from their meeting in Bratislava last week. The farming chambers called for demands from the 2017 Bratislava Declaration to be included in the CAP after 2020. "We highlight the need for a strong CAP after 2020, with an appropriate amount of funds in order to guarantee the economic viability of our farmers and in order to be able to maintain the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability," reads the statement. "We insist on the preservation of direct subsidies so that active farmers for whom agriculture is the main source of income will be CAP's main beneficiaries," stated the chambers, stressing that EU money for agriculture could not be replaced by national funding. The chambers further demanded that non-returnable investment support should be preserved as a "key driving force for innovative technologies", while refundable support and other financial tools can only be used in a supplementary manner.