Press release: Commission’s “anti-democratic” CAP revision escalated to EU Ombudsman 

In March, under pressure from different parties and claiming to be answering to farmers’ demands, the Commission ushered through changes to two key regulations in the CAP – a vast subsidy mechanism worth around €300 billion from 2023-2027, which funds farming operations all over the EU. The changes served to weaken environmental requirements for farmers in the CAP – a fatal move for agriculture. 

Citing political “urgency”, the Commission conferred with just four farming unions, behind closed doors, with no opinions sought from NGOs or citizens. The previous reform had garnered input from over 300,000 stakeholders.  

The resulting proposal for the revision went against the wishes of two of those four farming unions, and the Commission omitted to carry out any kind of impact assessment or otherwise demonstrate that it had taken into consideration the best available evidence.  

BirdLife attempted to access documents that may have shown the CAP was already failing to guarantee environmental protection – even without this further weakening – through access to information requests, but the Commission stopped responding.  

A group of 16 NGOs wrote to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to ask for the proposal to be withdrawn – but without success. 

ClientEarth’s lawyers termed the lightning-speed process that led to the revision “blatantly incompatible with EU law”.  

ClientEarth lawyer Sarah Martin said: “The CAP revision process we saw earlier this year was unprecedented and undemocratic. Changes to significant legislation like this take years to pass – in contrast, these took just weeks. We’ve only ever seen this ‘emergency’ process invoked during Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. 

“Citizens were prevented from exercising their right to participate in decision-making and access information on this most central aspect of life – our ability to feed ourselves now and into the future.  

“Panic-legislating must not become a standard for EU process and this is why we are taking this astonishing instance to the Ombudsman. For these institutions to remain credible, this cannot be repeated – with the CAP or any other law.” 

ClientEarth and BirdLife are arguing that the procedure amounts to maladministration by the European Commission, including by going against Better Regulations guidelines, and failing to live up to the EU’s legal principles on transparency, consultations and evidence-based decision-making. The organisations say that the Commission also breached its legal duty under the EU Climate Law by failing to assess the consistency of the CAP reform proposal with climate targets. 

As a result, the amended Policy disregards years of legitimate negotiations and engagement with stakeholders (including civil society) that had led to the adoption of the CAP 2023-2027, removing essential environmental conditions and putting the future of farming in jeopardy. 

Marilda Dhaskali, Senior Agriculture Policy Officer at BirdLife said: “Farmers cannot produce food without thriving nature, and profit cannot be made when crops are lost in floods, droughts, or fires aggravated by climate change. The EU Commission has paved the way for anti-democratic, anti-environmental, and above all, anti-farmers legislation, yielding to a powerful agri-business lobby that serves only a few. Food security, and the future of farmers and citizens, have been sacrificed for the sake of short-term profits and political calculations.” 

The organisations expect decisions on the admissibility of the complaint, followed by findings on their claims, within the next 6-18 months.  

ENDS

Notes to editors:

ClientEarth called out the process as anti-democratic at the time of the revision going through. 

Further concerns were raised after the European Parliament’s Legal Service refused to find the process unlawful and the revision was subsequently voted through. See ClientEarth’s legal analysis on this subject. 

61 organisations wrote to President von der Leyen in March, when the proposal was being tabled.  

16 organisations followed up just a couple of weeks afterwards, calling for a withdrawal of the proposal.  

Farming unions including ECVC and IFOAM protested the lack of consultation and reflection of diverse viewpoints: “We are deeply concerned that our participation in the consultation is used to legitimize the process and proposal on CAP simplification, which will mostly result in lowering the environmental delivery of the CAP, and ultimately, its legitimacy.” 

What can the Ombudsman do?  

The organisations are asking the Ombudsman for a finding of maladministration in the way that the Commission prepared the legislative proposal.  

They want the Ombudsman to recommend that the European Commission publicly communicate prior to making any deviations from Better Regulation Guidelines should they occur in the preparation of future proposals, convincingly justifying that it took into consideration the best available evidence; and ensure proportionality of the measures it proposes and coherence with other policies. 

The Ombudsman can also call for public access to the CAP annual performance reports requested by BirdLife.  

The European Ombudsman does not have enforcement powers, but it can propose solutions and make official recommendations.  

Prior legal action on the CAP 

This approach to the Ombudsman exclusively concerns the process used to amend the CAP, and centres around democratic concerns rather than the substance of the amendments.  

However, in 2023, ClientEarth teamed up with Collectif Nourrir to challenge the EU Commission’s approval of France’s strategic plan under the CAP, arguing that it fell far short of the Policy’s environmental requirements. The case is currently before the CJEU.   

Further background 

The European Parliament’s in-house think tank just published a briefing on the attention given to the environment in the Common Agricultural Policy – including the particular requirements for farmers to ensure “good agricultural and environmental condition of land” (GAECs). In its executive summary, it states: 

• “The GAECs have been at the centre of farmer protests in several Member States in 2024 and were recently amended, reducing their ambition”, and 
• “Several studies warn that Member States have not been ambitious in implementing the CAP’s environmental measures. It is claimed that states have used the flexibility granted them to define the exact requirements and voluntary measures in ways that have not led to significant change on the ground. Finding ways to motivate farmers to engage in practices that truly benefit the environment, while ensuring their economic sustainability, remains a major challenge for negotiations on the post-2027 CAP, particularly in the context of widespread farmer discontent”

The European Environment Agency warned against reflex lawmaking in its 2022 report (updated in April 2023), saying: “The European Green Deal and its farm to fork strategy represent a fundamental step towards achieving agriculture and food system sustainability. These commitments should not be undermined by short-sighted responses to rising food prices and fears of global food shortages resulting from the invasion of Ukraine (IPES-Food, 2022).” (Emphasis added).  

picture by Yves Adams