This special report (SR 10/2013) is entitled “Common Agricultural Policy: Is the specific support provided under Article 68 of Council Regulation (EC) No 73/2009 well designed and implemented?”. The ECA examined whether the introduction of the support provided for in Article 68 and the way it was implemented in 2010 and 2011 (management and control arrangements) is consistent with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), necessary, relevant and implemented with a satisfactory control system.

In order to do so, we need to promote the food sovereignty of these countries by supporting traditional agricultural policies, local resources, local crops and local markets, and preventing speculative attacks, land capture and seed monopolies, which threaten all of us, especially these weak countries.

– Mr President, I voted for the Goepel report, not because I support the common agricultural policy but because I support its reform: in particular, its focus on upland farms.

Creation of a specific compensatory allowance for excessive costs in the context of cohesion policy for the period 2007–2013 (a budget of €979 million was allocated at the December 2005 European Summit under the ERDF); Reform of specific support programmes for local agricultural production (POSEIs) and the common organisation of the sugar market; Taking account of the specific characteristics of the outermost regions in reforming the regional guidelines and in the new guidelines for state aid for transport in the aviation sector; Taking account of the specific characteristics of the outermost regions in rural development policy, th ...[+++]e future framework programme for research and innovation, the Green Paper on future maritime policy, the review of the White Paper on transport and the negotiation of economic partnership agreements with the ACP countries; Work on the situation concerning services of general economic interest and new information and communication technologies or evaluation of the effects of the difficulties in the outermost regions.

The objectives of the CAP remain the same as those established in Berlin and enhanced in the European Summit of Göteborg: a competitive agricultural sector, production methods that support environmentally friendly, quality products that the public wants, a fair standard of living and income stability for the agricultural community, diversity in forms of agriculture, maintenance of visual amenities and support for rural communities, simplicity in agricultural policy and the sharing of responsibilities among Commission and member states ...[+++], justification of support through the provision of services that the public expects farmers to provide.

The reforms needed to achieve this were tackled mainly from the second half of the 'eighties leading to the reform of the Structural Funds in 1988 and the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in 1992, both of which led to basic changes in the way things were organized: - In structural policy there was a clear shift of emphasis from sectoral structural policy to the integrated development of rural areas and to a much greater integration of the principle of subsidiarity; - Under the 1992 CAP reform the indirect support of agricultural incomes via artificially raised prices in certain key areas was reduced and replaced by direct income ...[+++] support via deficiency payments.