Tight government budgets in the wake of the financial crisis will increase support for reforming the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Caroline Spelman, the new UK minister for agriculture and environment, said in Brussels today. 

Speaking at her first meeting of EU agriculture ministers since being appointed secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, Spelman said the financial crisis was a “reality check” that would help to increase support among EU member states for reform of the CAP.

“The hard times financially will focus all member states’ minds on how we are going to focus these resources,” she told journalists.

Spelman, a Conservative who represented European beet growers before becoming an member of parliament in 1997, said that the UK had been pushing for CAP reform for some time, adding that the difficult financial circumstances “will bring allies to our side”.

She said that the CAP reforms of the last ten years “had not been helpful to British interests”.
 
Spelman’s comments come as the debate about reform of the CAP for the post-2013 period is starting to gain momentum. Last month the European Commission launched a consultation on reforming the CAP with the aim of publishing a policy paper at the end of the year.

Spelman, who speaks French and German, met Dacian Cioloş, the European commissioner for agriculture, this morning at the agriculture ministers’ council in Brussels.

Spelman also said there were no contentious areas in environment and agriculture policy between the two parties in the UK coalition, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. The three junior ministers in the department – Jim Paice, Richard Benyon and Oliver Henley – are all Conservatives and two are farmers. Spelman said that the environment would remain an important part of her department’s work. “The [farming] industry itself has got to engage with the environment,” she said.

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