Spain and Portugal will jointly ask Brussels to adopt measures to alleviate the effects of drought on European agriculture. Among these, the urgent activation of the crisis reserve fund of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the increase of advances up to the maximum allowed by law, so that farmers and breeders have more resources to mitigate the consequences of the lack of waterfall. This was agreed by the Ministers of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Luis Planas (Spain) and Maria do Céu Antunes (Portugal), during the bilateral meeting held in Lisbon. Both agreed to express this need with one voice, given the devastation that the intense drought is causing in the Iberian Peninsula, at the next Council of Agriculture and Fisheries Ministers of the European Union.

The two Iberian countries, with the support of France and Italy, will express to the European Commission at the next meeting of the Council on May 30, the need to activate all the necessary measures in the face of a European problem, such as drought. Planas recalled that on April 24 he had sent a letter to the Agriculture Commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski , in which he asked the European Commission to establish urgent measures to alleviate the drought situation. This initiative also has the support of France, as Minister Marc Fesneau confirmed a few days later in another bilateral meeting he held with Planas in Paris at the end of last month (see EFA News).

Food security in the face of the current scenario of climate change and monitoring the situation of agricultural and livestock markets due to the war in Ukraine were the priorities recently set by the Ministers of Agriculture of Spain, Belgium and Hungary in the meetingheld to prepare a common program for the next three presidencies of the EU Council, scheduled between 1 July and 31 December 2024.

In the latest Advisory Council on agricultural policy, the Spanish minister detailed to regional officials on the ground the requests Spain is proposing to the European Commission to make the CAP more flexible and support producers in the face of drought, as well as to ask for their collaboration in the distribution of direct aid adopted by the Spanish government, which has a budget of 636 million euros.