On 7 February, round two of the EU Budget negotiations begins. For those of you that have not been following this saga, 27 Heads of State need to agree how to spend about a trillion Euros over the 2014-2020. Their meeting next week is the latest attempt to thrash out a deal. The last time they met, the bits of the Budget that offer the best value for taxpayers money and supported the environment, seemed to be most at risk of being traded away.
Our major concern remains the fate of funding which supports wildlife-friendly farming (the so-called Pillar II of the Common Agriculture Policy). This provides a lifeline for species such as turtle dove and cirl bunting as well as supporting farmers to deliver environmental public goods which the market doesn’t reward.
We've produced this short video to explain the significance of the Budget:
We hope that it inspires people to contact the Prime Minister and give him a clear message to agree a Budget that works for wildlife.
Think the CAP may actually have been very successful at what it set out to do in that I thought it meant to produce lots of food cheaply,no one can say that aim not achieved maybe now a minority of the public would pay a bit more for food if it meant more wildlife but we have to have some reservations even about that seeing as Organic sales well down now less money about.People have of course been leaving the land for easier jobs at least for two centuries and just like other industry's more modern machinery over that time in all industry's has meant less people needed to produce the same output.The big thing driving this of course are the massive increase in everyone's wages.