BRUSSELS — Faced with a €30 billion-a-year repayment bill from Covid-era borrowing, the European Commission briefly considered the unthinkable — tapping into the EU’s most sacred cow, farm subsidies.
For a few tense months, Brussels flirted with folding the Common Agricultural Policy and cohesion funds into broader national envelopes, a so-called national partnership plan modeled on the pandemic-era Recovery and Resilience Facility.
Under the proposal, national governments would have more control over how EU money was spent, allowing for faster shifts toward priorities like defense, competitiveness and climate. Officials pitched the system as flexible and streamlined. Critics saw it as a power grab — and a stealth attempt to hollow out the CAP.
As budget talks ramped up, so did the resistance.
Farm lobbyists mobilized. Agriculture ministers revolted. The Commission’s own agriculture chief, Christophe Hansen, began pushing back internally. Germany’s governing Christian Democrats wrote to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who hails from the party, urging their “Dear Ursula” not to fold the farm budget into broader spending plans.
“Cuts to the Common Agricultural Policy would send out completely the wrong signal,” Johannes Steiniger, one of the authors of the letter, told POLITICO. “The CAP must continue to have an independent and reliable budget.”
The goal had been to fundamentally reshape how the farm budget worked. But in the end, the next CAP will look much like the current one, with its basic structure left intact.
By June, the Commission had quietly shelved the restructuring plan. Jan Olbrycht, a special adviser to Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin, said the CAP would remain as a separate pillar in the EU’s 2028-2034 budget. Rural development funding would stay within the CAP’s two-pillar structure. Earlier ideas to shift that money to the cohesion rubric were, Olbrycht said, “over, finished.”
That marked a major retreat before the official unveiling of the Commission’s budget proposal on July 16. And it has underscored the raw political power the farm lobby can still exert in Brussels, even as the number of farmers declines and the EU faces growing calls to redirect money toward strategic challenges.
Structure saved, but cuts still sting
For Europe’s farmers, the victory is bittersweet. With pressure mounting to repay the Covid debt and finance new priorities, Brussels is trying to stretch a budget that is unlikely to grow.
The Commission is still expected to propose significant cuts to overall CAP funding. Early estimates suggest a reduction of between 15 percent and 25 percent compared to current levels. While the structure of the CAP may be safe, the size of the pot is not.
At nearly €400 billion, the CAP currently accounts for almost a third of the EU’s entire seven-year budget. Created in 1962, it is the bloc’s oldest common policy — and is fiercely defended by the vested interests that have benefited from it for so long.
In practice, however, farmers will still lose money. Top-ups to direct payments, the backbone of the CAP, are likely to shrink. That could be enough to rekindle the protests that swept across Europe last year, especially if farmers feel they’ve been strung along with structural protections but no financial ones.
“If the Commission is serious about its vision for agriculture and wants to strengthen European agriculture and make it fit for the future, rumors of a drastic budget cut cannot be a serious option,” Bernhard Krüsken, general secretary of the German Farmers’ Association, told POLITICO.
“Anything other than an increased and earmarked agricultural budget will not do justice to the challenges of the time.”
The failed attempt to restructure the CAP also reveals how hard it is to shift money in Brussels. Even as EU officials argue for a more strategic budget, the traditional alliance of farm groups, conservative MEPs, and agriculture ministries continues to defend the CAP with almost religious fervor.
The political compromise leaves both sides unsatisfied. For farm groups, structural survival without financial security is little comfort. For budget hawks and modernizers, keeping the CAP intact looks like a missed opportunity.
But it also illustrates a deeper truth about Brussels: Power in EU budget politics isn’t just about the numbers. It’s about the coalitions that can be mobilized, and the red lines drawn early and loudly.
And this time, the farmers shouted loudest.
Bartosz Brzeziński reported from Brussels. Oliver Noyan reported from Berlin. Gregorio Sorgi contributed reporting.
The post Brussels backs off from big farm shake-up. Cuts are coming anyway. appeared first on Politico.
