Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos has renewed his earlier calls for a “strong” Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a way of being prepared to take up unexpected challenges, such as the chaos created by the cloud of volcanic ash that recently drifted over Europe from Iceland. All it took was a “few days of interruption” of European air traffic for “certain supermarkets to be apprehensive about their supply of certain fruit and vegetables,” he commented at a conference in Copenhagen on the post-2013 CAP, on 26 April.

Discussing the CAP reform, the commissioner observed that “public funds must be divided up fairly and transparently”. There is a need to “raise the issue of a more balanced distribution among the member states, regions and different types of farmers”. “We mustn’t let the crisis destroy whole sections of European agriculture in the name of market realities,” he continued. The commissioner mentioned the need “to take account of the collapse of farmers’ earnings in 2009”.

Discussions on the future of the CAP and the EU budget from 2014 are in the early stages.