Analysis: EU audit warning exposes risks at the heart of planned CAP overhaul
The European Court of Auditors has fired an early warning shot over the European Commission’s plan to fold agricultural policy into a wider, performance-driven budget in the next Multiannual Financial Framework, saying the redesign could delay farm payments, heighten uncertainty and weaken the “common” in the Common Agricultural Policy. The critique goes to the core of how the EU intends to fund farming, rural development and cohesion from 2028 to 2034—and whether that shift can be delivered without collateral damage for Europe’s farmers.
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“Clarity, predictability and fairness are essential for a Common Agricultural Policy that truly supports farmers and rural communities,” said ECA member Iliana Ivanova. Her message lands as EU capitals and institutions face pressure to sketch the MFF’s broad outline before the end of the Irish presidency in the second half of this year.
What changes—and why it matters
At stake is a proposed €2 trillion EU budget that would radically recast spending priorities toward innovation and competitiveness and overhaul how agricultural money is organized. For the first time since 1962, agriculture would not have a standalone budget heading. The longstanding split between direct payments to farmers and rural development—known as Pillar One and Pillar Two—would be scrapped. In its place, member states would receive a single allocation that also includes cohesion and other regional supports, managed jointly with the European Commission through National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs).
Under the blueprint, a single European Fund worth €865 billion—the largest part of the MFF—would cover agriculture, rural development, fisheries and maritime sectors. Within that, some CAP money would be ringfenced, notably €293.7 billion for direct payments and selected measures that used to sit under Pillar Two. A larger, non-ringfenced pot—€453 billion—would mix cohesion, agriculture, fisheries and security spending and include traditional CAP supports like LEADER rural programs, aid for outermost regions and the EU school scheme. That pool would be programmed under NRPPs and subject to joint management by Brussels and national authorities.
The auditors’ core concerns
The ECA welcomes several aims of the reform, including flexibility for member states to tailor measures to national and regional challenges. But the watchdog’s headline concerns are structural and immediate for farm incomes:
- Payment timing: Assessing and adopting NRPPs could slow the disbursement of CAP funds. Farmers, who plan cash flow months ahead, risk facing payment delays as complex national plans are negotiated and approved.
- Budget opacity: The overall CAP envelope would not be known until after NRPPs are adopted, injecting uncertainty into farmers’ income expectations and member states’ programming choices.
- Uneven playing field: Greater national flexibility may fragment the single market for agriculture. “This…creates a risk for the common character of the policy,” Ivanova said, warning that significant divergence could distort competition and dilute alignment with EU-level priorities.
- Legal complexity: Efforts to streamline the CAP’s “green architecture” by merging eco-schemes with agri-environment and climate measures could backfire if interventions remain scattered across several legal proposals. That patchwork may confuse paying agencies and beneficiaries alike—and complicate compliance.
The effect, taken together, is a reform that aims to simplify but may initially complicate: more moving parts, more negotiation layers and more scope for delay at precisely the moment farmers demand predictability.
Governance and the marathon ahead
EU Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen acknowledged the scale of the challenge. “This is not a sprint, it is a marathon,” he told Ireland’s Oireachtas European Affairs Committee, signaling openness to adjustments. “Now that the proposals are on the table, the co-legislators have to contribute to this fine tuning. And this fine tuning will be about the governance, it will be about the change, it will be about uncertainties.”
That fine-tuning will likely focus on three pressure points identified by the auditors: the legal base for agricultural interventions, the approval calendar for NRPPs and safeguards to preserve the CAP’s common rules. Member states are already examining changes that would shift relevant articles from the NRPP framework back into a CAP regulation—an approach farm groups favor to anchor more of the policy in familiar, sector-specific law.
Farmers’ stakes: budgets and basic certainty
The Irish Farmers’ Association says the current MFF proposal amounts to a cut of more than 20% in the agriculture budget and wants Pillar Two restored with a ringfenced farm allocation. “We would share many of the observations noted within the Auditors report,” IFA President Francie Gorman said, calling the Commission plan “more risk than opportunity…more complexity, and more financial uncertainty which won’t be of benefit to genuine active farmers—either existing or the next generation.” He warned that a 20% cut would tighten pressure on Irish farm incomes with knock-on environmental, social and economic effects across rural communities.
The IFA’s push underlines the political bind: to modernize CAP funding while preserving the basic income certainty many farmers rely on. Any perception that the new framework erodes that certainty—whether through longer approval processes, blurred eligibility rules or competition distortions—will harden resistance on the ground and in national parliaments.
Balancing innovation with the “common” in CAP
The Commission’s strategic bet is that a single fund and flexible, performance-based planning can drive smarter investment—channelling money into innovation, competitiveness and climate action while reducing administrative burden. The ECA’s assessment does not reject that vision; it questions whether the legal and governance plumbing is ready to carry it.
Three practical tests now define the road ahead:
- Early clarity: Farmers and national paying agencies need timely, binding guidance on envelopes, eligibility and monitoring to prevent payment bottlenecks when the new period starts.
- Coherence of the legal base: Consolidating core CAP interventions under a clear, sector-specific regulation could avoid the scattering that auditors say risks confusion.
- Safeguards for the single market: Common baselines, transparent criteria and targeted ringfencing can help preserve fair competition as member states tailor programs to local needs.
The bottom line
A reform of this scale will only succeed if it delivers what farmers value most: predictability and fairness. Ivanova’s warning reframes the debate from high-level architecture to on-farm realities—when payments arrive, what rules apply and whether neighbors play by comparable terms. With the clock ticking on the 2028–2034 budget, the EU can still reconcile innovation with stability. But it will require tightening the legal framework, smoothing approval timelines and placing a firmer floor under farm income supports to ensure the “common” stays in the Common Agricultural Policy.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
