Evolução ou revolução: avaliação da proposta da Comissão para a PAC 2028-2034 29 Member States with limited fiscal capacity, the temptation to allocate as much CAP funding as possible to direct payments where no national contribution is required will be hard to withstand. Conclusions A common theme underlying the response to several aspects of the Commission proposals is finding the right balance between providing flexibility to Member States while maintaining a common agricultural policy. Everyone agrees that flexibility is necessary and desirable, and yet everyone is also aware that it creates risks, not least for the survival of the single market. And the CAP has never been totally uniform in its implementation. The current CAP had already moved in the direction of giving Member States more flexibility, but the Commission proposal goes much further. It has opened the possibility for much greater differences in the overall CAP budget between Member States, in the size of direct payments per hectare, in the ambition in the conditions farmers must meet for direct payments, whether they will be compensated for meeting those conditions or not, and whether they will receive coupled payments or not. The new Commission steering mechanism, which will provide recommendations to Member States on the content of the CAP chapter in their national Plans, is a key mechanism to ensure that Member States, in designing their CAP interventions, also contribute to Europe-wide objectives. But the Commission view suggests it will focus on identifying the objectives that Member States should prioritise in their CAP Plans, without making recommendations on the interventions to be adopted. Member States in the Council welcome this flexibility, but is there a point at which the idea of a common agricultural policy disappears? The other main flashpoint is around support for the transition to more sustainable farming practices in the EU. The Commission insists that it remains committed to promoting this transition, even if any mention of Farm to Fork targets has been eliminated. But it insists that the transition should be supported through incentives, rather than driven by regulation. The corollary of this approach is that significantly greater resources need to be allocated to supporting this transition if we are to achieve the same level of climate and environmental ambition. Yet we have underlined the fear that, in practice, the allocation of resources to these objectives will significantly decline, not only in absolute but also in relative terms. This may address a short-term political need, but it stores up problems for the long-term resilience of the agricultural sector and its ability to provide for Europe’s food security.
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