On the occasion of the Communication from the Commission on Preparing for the "Health Check" of the CAP reform Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel advocated rearranging agricultural subsidies into funds to promote rural development. Minister Gabriel said: "Promoting renewable energy sources, direct marketing of organic food, farm holidays - that is in my eyes the future of agricultural policy. In view of skyrocketing agricultural prices it is becoming more and more difficult to justify general agricultural subsidies. The EU Commission is moving in the right direction with its proposals for a sensible further development of CAP. I personally would have even preferred a stronger regrouping of subsidies towards an integrated promotion of rural development."
In its Communication on the "Health Check", the Commission proposes i.a. continuing to decouple direct agricultural payments from production incentives, increasing the redeployment of agricultural subsidies in rural development from the current 5 percent to 13 percent by 2013 and, in view of the strong increase in demand, abolishing set asides which were originally introduced in order to reduce production.
Minister Gabriel continued: "We no longer need set asides for economic reasons. However, taking the increasing pressure on valuable arable and natural areas particularly into account, we have to ensure that the economic advantages of set asides are maintained and at the same time optimised."