Farmers warn that the disappearance of the CAP will make the shopping basket more expensive by up to 500 euros per year

Latest European Council of the year, and the one that closes the Danish presidency of the European Union (EU), which will take place on December 18 and 19 in Brussels will have in the background not the traditional carols and Christmas songs, but the sound of the protests of hundreds of farmers from the Twenty-seven. The majority organizations, Asaja, COAG and UPA They will attend representing the Spanish countryside with a delegation of up to 500 farmers from all over the country, who will join their European counterparts. The objective is none other than that the European Commission (EC) withdraw the budget proposal for the period 2028-2034, which contemplates a recorte in the funds of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of up to 22%. The main agricultural professional associations, which are members of the main European organization in the sector, COPA COGECA, consider that if the Commission project goes ahead, the CAP would disappear. What it would mean an increase in the European shopping basket between 350 and 500 euros per year, according to COAG estimates.

This agricultural organization estimates that the disappearance of the CAP would mean that Spain would stop receiving 900 million euros annually and, for consumers, an increase in costs in the shopping basket of between 6.5% and 9.5%, these are between 350 and 500 euros per year. In any case, Asaja, COAG and UPA, the three main organizations in the agricultural sector, do not like the letter of the European Commission’s budget proposal for agriculture and livestock. President Asaja, Pedro Barato, has highlighted that the irony that “it is one of the budgets that rises the most but the one that dedicates the lowest allocation to agriculture”. Specifically, he stressed that the amount for farmers and ranchers falls by 22% “and if we add inflation this amounts to up to 32%.”

For all of the above, between 500 and 550 farmers from all over Spain will join hundreds of others from the other 26 EU countries in a large demonstration this coming Thursday, during the celebration of the last European Council of the year. For Cheap “This is the beginning of the defense of the Spanish countryside and then we will see what comes” and demands that the Commission rectify the proposal, otherwise it opens the door to new mobilizations. A similar opinion has been expressed by the general secretaries of COAG, Miguel Padilla, and of UPA, Cristóbal Cano. For the head of UPA “The music sounded good, but when we learned the lyrics last July We saw the CAP lose budgetary weight, when it no longer even reaches 20%.” Cano (UPA) has demanded a CAP that “is up to par” and demanded “to have the same rules to compete in the Single Market.” He did clarify that there are some positive aspects in the score that Brussels wants to interpret from 2028, such as the increase in associated aid or “a more social distribution of aid.”