Brussels, 16 July 2025 – The European Commission’s proposal for a reformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2027 – which currently accounts for a third of the ongoing EU budget – fails to guarantee minimum funding to support farmers in the green transition, leaving ambition entirely in the hands of – generally reluctant – Farm Ministers. 

The European Environmental Bureau (EEB), alongside other environmental organisations, warns that without dedicated funding and stronger safeguards, the EU risks falling dangerously short on climate and biodiversity targets, while creating a fragmented, unlevel playing field for farmers across Europe. This jeopardises the resilience of agricultural land in the face of the triple climate, nature, and pollution crisis, directly threatening farmers’ livelihoods. 

Théo Paquet, Senior Policy Officer for Agriculture at the EEB, said: 

“This proposal effectively hands Members States a blank cheque to rewrite the rules whilst failing to ringfence a single euro for achieving environmental objectives – a move that will trigger a race to the bottom and leave farmers alone in the fight against the climate crisis. The only silver lining is the long-overdue reform of “income support” payments, which would prioritise farmers in need of support, rather than rewarding large farms based on size alone.”

 

The EEB finds the following unacceptable: 

• The complete lack of dedicated financing for achieving environmental measures, jeopardising the EU’s ability to reach its climate and environmental objectives. 

• Following recent waves of “simplification” where environmental safeguards were stripped from the current CAP, this proposal grants Member States excessive discretion in defining the environmental conditions farmers must meet to receive subsidies. Analysis shows that when provided with such flexibilities, Member States lower environmental standards and lose policy cohesion, as green ambition is perceived as a competitive disadvantage despite the real risk these actions pose to the integrity of the EU single market, once the cornerstone of EU competitiveness.  

• The lack of meaningful targets or means to track performance grants Member States huge flexibility to use public funds without the guarantee that they will deliver real results. 

• Maintenance of harmful subsidies in the form of “coupled support” (to, for example, intensive dairy farming) and “investment support” (to, for example, unsustainable irrigation) due to the lack of meaningful and comprehensive environmental safeguards attached to these specific measures, despite well-documented evidence of negative environmental impacts. Furthermore, the amount of funding for “coupled support” has increased, potentially increasing the harmful impacts.  

The EEB welcomes: 

• The mandatory capping and gradual reduction in area-based income support is a welcome and long-overdue step. If maintained after negotiations in the Parliament and among Member States, this would finally initiate a move away from the current system that rewards the largest farms based on their size alone, leading to 20% of farmers receiving 80% of funds. By limiting and gradually reducing payments for the largest farms, this measure would contribute to a fairer and less wasteful agricultural policy.  

• The streamlining of green farm payments and the introduction of new “transition actions” to support farms based on an approved transition plan. Member States will also be required to put in place schemes that: support commitments to maintain organic farming; promote the extensification of livestock production; and that support farmers who wish to transition. However, in the absence of a dedicated budget, these measures risk remaining little more than symbolic gestures, with insufficient support to drive the large-scale change that is urgently needed to protect farmers and their land from climate and environmental breakdown.  

 [ENDS] 

Notes for editors 

• Read the EEB, BirdLife Europe, WWF European Policy Office, Greenpeace European Unit’s joint position paper which argues that the current CAP lacks legitimacy and should be replaced with a Common Agricultural, Food, and Land Stewardship Policy: Time for farmers and nature to thrive: A proposal for a performance-based policy to drive the transition of Europe’s food and farming sector 

• The Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2028-2034 includes a commitment to “mainstream” climate and biodiversity across policy areas by ensuring that 35% of the budget supports activities related to climate and biodiversity. While this sounds promising, a 2021 special report by the European Court of Auditors found that despite the €100 billion “climate spending” (over the 2014-2020 budget period) in the CAP there was little impact on emissions, in part due to flawed methodologies in labelling “climate spending” in agriculture. “Mainstreaming” differs from “ringfencing” in that it relies on ex-post labelling of expenditure as “climate or biodiversity spending” based on standard “markers”, whereas ringfencing requires ex-ante allocation of funding to specific measures.