Everyone Can Be a Winner in the New Common Agricultural Policy

Hungary has reached a good compromise with the European Commission on the distribution and payment conditions of the next period of the Common Agricultural Policy. By taking advantage of the opportunities, everyone can be a winner of the new agricultural support system, as the Secretary of State for Agriculture and Rural Development assessed the results of the negotiations of the past one and a half years at the Agrarian Sector 2022 conference. 

At the round-table discussion on the subject, Zsolt Feldman said that after numerous professional negotiations and keeping the interests of Hungarian farmers in mind, the Hungarian government has reached an agreement with the European Commission on the Hungarian strategic framework of the Common Agricultural Policy.

The aim was to strike a balance between environmental requirements and competitiveness aspects,

the secretary of state said. We were able to achieve this by ensuring that the amount of direct support for the income security of Hungarian farmers – thanks to the 80 percent additional national funding for rural development – did not decrease, while the overall budget of the Common Agricultural Policy at the EU level decreased, Feldman noted.

The participants of the round-table mentioned as one of the elements of the significant changes of the new cycle starting from 2023, that a new form of support, the re-distributive support, will be available for small and medium-sized farms. These are expected to provide an additional €80 for the first 10 hectares and €40 for the 11-150 hectares, on top of the basic payment of around €147.

At the same time, the new EU rules and the European Commission’s expectations will further strengthen the environmental requirements linked to the basic payment, as well as the rules on non-productive land, crop rotation, and soil protection, he said.

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