With a different agricultural policy, we would save over EUR 1.8 billion

At European level, the discussion on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has started. And that discussion is about money, and lots of it. A number of countries (France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Finland and Ireland) have already let it be known that there can be no savings permitted on agriculture. Minister Ducarme has added his voice to these. And earlier the CD&V also expressed its support of this approach.

“Every year, the EU diverts more and more of our tax to farmers in above all Eastern and Southern Europe. Between 2000 and 2014 it was an average of some EUR 380 million a year, while from 2015 to 2020 it is increasing to almost EUR 700 million a year,” says MEP Sander Loones. “It is incomprehensible that Minister Ducarme wants to keep these Transfers The money flows from Flanders to Brussels and Wallonia are called transfers. The transfers from the federal budget, the Financing Law and social security amount to between 6 and 7 billion euros per year, and 11 billion euros if debt repayments are included. The size of the transfers is always contested by the French-speaking side or they are just referred to as normal solidarity contributions. A study by Vives (KU Leuven) revealed that the transfers did not serve solidarity, but had a paralysing effect on the growth of both the Walloon and Flemish economies. transfers in place. The N-VA wants the opposite - that these amounts are invested in our own Flemish and Walloon farmers.”

We will support our farmers ourselves

“No cutbacks on the European agricultural budget” and “Our farmers shouldn’t be the ones that end up paying for Brexit”: these slogans go down very well of course. “But in reality it means that more tax money is going to industrial agriculture in Eastern and Southern Europe that competes against our farmers,” Sander Loones adds. “But things can be different. Imagine if in the CAP we were to reduce the European direct payments to farmers by 30%. The Belgian contribution to the EU could then drop by EUR 2.91 billion. Our farmers would get less support from Europe, but we can easily make up for that with the monetary resources freed up. By providing a national co-financing of EUR 1.061 billion, their total direct income support would stay at exactly the same level. We could actually use the EUR 1.849 billion we save to support our farmers to an even greater extent than we do today.”