photo: WikiCommons
The European Parliament held its final vote yesterday, Wednesday 20th November, on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In voting as it did, Parliament has intensified the failure to deliver what was supposed to be a fairer, simpler and greener agriculture policy for Europe.
”Business as usual has prevailed at 90%” said Benedikt Haerlin of NGO platform ARC2020.EU and Meine Landwirtschaft. “Unfortunately the role of the European Parliament had been to substantially cut back on the initial progress towards sustainability proposed by the European Commission. From 2014 to 2020 we will see at least as many farms being closed down within the European Union, organic farming will suffer financially, biodiversity will suffer even more and the role of the European Union in the world will continue to be a resource-sucker at the expense of the global poor and the environment.”
Importantly, all amendments, some of which could have improved the proposals, were dropped and not voted on. This democratically questionable move occurred due to a change in the voting order of the overall EU budget files, at the behest of the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz.
Five legislative acts were voted on, and with partial exception of the rural development vote, and the procedural transitional rules vote, business as usual rather than genuine reform was supported each time. […]
Read the entire article and find background information on ARC2020.eu
