At the Agriculture and Fisheries Council held in Luxembourg today, ministers confronted the complexity of current provisions on the direct ecological payment scheme, which make it difficult to assess the effectiveness of the measure and the Commission’s report on implementation of obligations for areas of ecological interest.

The report stated that "climate change could be further mitigated by growing more legumes," said Luxembourg Agriculture Minister Fernand Etgen, while certain provisions of the delegated act recently passed on to the European Parliament on greening and simplification are likely to severely reduce crop production of legumes as areas of ecological interest in many regions, which the Minister said is regrettable.

The simplification of the CAP also came up for discussion with Minister Etgen stressing the overriding importance that he attaches to a process of simplification in the short, medium and longer term. He believes that, in general, the CAP has reached a level of micro-management which seems to him to be disproportionate and calls for the CAP not only to achieve a theoretical simplification but also for tangible results for both the beneficiaries and the administrations implementing the CAP.

The last item on the agenda is on the fraudulent system unveiled in 21 establishments of the meat industry in Brazil, based on a corrupt network of state inspectors. The precise nature of the fraud and possible health security problems is, however, not very well established at this time due to the lack of cooperation on the part of the Brazilian authorities. Minister Etgen believes that we are facing a very serious situation of large-scale commercial fraud. He adds that in this case the first concern must be the protection of our fellow citizens, before any consideration of a commercial or political nature.

He therefore welcomes the first protection measures announced by the European Commission, in particular the withdrawal from the market of the products of the establishments involved in fraud, as well as enhanced import controls, including microbiological tests.

In order to protect consumers, Minister Fernand Etgen is in favour of suspending imports of meat from the three Brazilian states involved in this fraud, pending the outcome of the European Commission's audit. 

Image: Minister Fernand Etgen in Brussels this March