The EU Commission's latest proposal bins
capping, replacing it with progressive modulation.
Marianne Fischer Boel, the agricultural commissioner, has
always stated that the Common Agricultural Policy (Cap) Health
Check is not a major policy reform but a way of gently
improving current policy to better suit European agriculture.
It aims to examine current policies and negotiate how the
constituent parts might be improved for implementation in
2009.
Of the policies appearing on the negotiating table, the most
important for the UK is dropping the idea to cap aid payments
to large farmers. Instead, the Commission is now proposing to
merge capping with a previous but contentious suggestion
– the rise in the rate of compulsory European Union
(EU) modulation – to form progressive modulation.
