UKIP Eastern Counties
The CAP is “long past its sell by date”
Wednesday, 1st February 2012
Stuart Agnew MEP
25 January 2012
The EU’s decision to launch a lavish ‘communication’ programme this week to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the Common Agricultural Policy has attracted fierce criticism from the UKIP agriculture spokesman, Stuart Agnew MEP. Mr Agnew said: “There is no cause for celebrating a disastrously flawed policy that has institutionalised corruption and non-compliance. Anomalies in CAP subsidies are regularly highlighted by the European Court of Auditors. Only in the first 12 years of its half century, did the CAP work reasonably well. Since then, it has all been downhill.
“At a time when food has never been in more demand, worldwide, the CAP is inflicting an ever increasing burden of complicated bureaucracy on our farmers, that is threatening to drown them. The amount of money the EU spends on agriculture is falling and plans for enlargement of the EU mean that the cake will have to be divided even further. Farmers are appalled by the latest planned reforms of the CAP that interfere with tried and tested crop rotation methods and are hopelessly impractical. The future for agriculture looks bleak, while it remains hamstrung by the CAP.
“The CAP is long past its sell by date. It is a mid-20th century solution to 21st century problems.”
