AUTHORS: David Baldock – Kaley Hart

The long debate over greening in this year’s CAP reform is moving towards a climax. The three key European institutions (the Parliament, the Council and the Commission) are negotiating a final compromise on the text in the “trilogue” process. The principle of spending public money on public goods is intended to be central to the redesign of the CAP for 2014-2020. However, nearly all the mechanisms proposed for greening the policy have been subject to unhelpful changes in the European Parliament and Council and are on the list of unresolved items. To make greening work, both a coherent policy design and a set of well-designed measures is required, but both are in peril at the moment.

This short paper provides an overview of the state of play on the greening in Pillar 1, Pillar 2 and cross-compliance. It reflects on the architecture of the CAP as well as the implications of the different ways in which green elements have been watered down in negotiations, suggestions are made about how the outstanding issues should be resolved if greenwash is to be avoided and a credible CAP put in place.