Macron calls for new approach of CAP to face "offensives" inside and outside European bloc
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E-mail Xinhua, February 23, 2019
PARIS, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday pleaded for a new approach of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to better defend European farm sector amid fierce competition of world's powers and mounting of nationalism in the old continent.
"A few weeks from the European elections and while the new CAP is being discussed in Brussels, I urge unity and mobilization," Macron said.
"If we yield to the spirit of division, then in five, ten, fifteen years, we will no longer be able to guarantee a healthy, traceable food supply," he added, asking for a common front to overcome threats from "the outside by great powers who no longer hesitate to adopt offensive strategies to impose their standards."
"Agricultural Europe is also threatened from within because those who, under the pretext that the CAP is imperfect, that it is not their priority, would like to renationalise it, would like a policy reduced to acquests," he noted.
At the annual agriculture show here, Macron told a gathering of 500 farmers, that the "challenge is ... to reinvent" the CAP to guarantee food, environmental and industrial sovereignty.
In this context, he noted the need to reform the policy in a way to protect them from climate and market risks, stressing that "no trade agreement can authorize products which do not meet European, environmental, health, and social standards."
Furthermore, he pledged an agricultural policy's change with more focus on ecology in addition to the acceleration of research and renewal of generations.
As Britain exit from the European bloc comes closer, local farmers fear impacts of reestablishment of sanitary control and tariffs on domestic businesses, Macron promised to defend that "with force."
"I know that several sectors today are afraid of a changing context, I know that our fishermen fear the effects of Brexit," he admitted.
"France defends at this time in Brussels an ambitious budget, a budget that must reflect the consequences of Brexit," he said.
Introduced in 1962, the CAP implements a system of agricultural subsidies to help European farmers suffering declining revenue and soaring producer prices. Enditem
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