Letter from Brussels - June 2025

Basically, it is the budget – how much the EU will have to spend on everything between 2028 and 2032. The current 2021-2027 budget is worth €1.8 trillion (tr). Ringfenced in that is €386bn allocated to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which is spread around the nine million farmers dotted across the EU27.
Established in 1962, the CAP has served to support safe, traceable food production across Europe, underpinning food security while also striving to support farm incomes, protect the environment and help rural communities and rural jobs thrive. It is not without its faults, of course, and the value of payments has shrunk over time. At the end of each cycle, there are tweaks; we have had the MacSharry reforms, Agenda 2000, the health check, and so on.
Each year, Teagasc provides us with a good overview of the value of the CAP and in the case of beef and sheep farmers, it is vital to their survival. Therefore, we should be very worried about what the EU Commission is proposing with regards to the pot of money for the next MFF. Put simply, the mood music here in Brussels is extremely concerning as there is talk that the CAP as we know it will be scrapped with all the CAP budget and the 50 or so other EU schemes pooled into one pot from which member states could decide how much to allocate where.
The are many reasons for this proposed overhaul of the EU funding model with the precarious geopolitical tensions globally dominating. Earlier this year, EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen announced the ReArm Europe plan which aims to unlock €800bn in additional EU defence spending. There are Covid-related borrowings that need to be paid back, and big EU economies are under pressure which threatens net contributions to the EU budget.
Last month, Copa and Cogeca, which represents the EU27 farm and cooperative organisations including the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) and ICOS held a flash protest in Brussels and outside EU Commission offices across Member States warning that this is not just about farmers and agri-cooperatives, it’s about every European citizen who relies on safe, affordable, and sustainable food.
The next few weeks will be a test for our EU Commissioner Michael McGrath, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon and their counterparts across Europe in terms of what they can do to protect and support a strong CAP. July 16 is D-day.