The European Commission plans to drastically ease the environmental rules of the Common Agricultural Policy. The new CAP (2023-2027), which came into force last year, requires farmers to respect a series of strict environmental criteria to receive European payments.
The proposals aim to greatly relax these criteria, or even to remove some of them, to the great dismay of environmental NGOs. Most of these changes will come into force in 2025, but will apply retroactively to January 1, 2024, says Janusz Wojciechowski.