Agriculture ministers from the European Union member countries this week struck a deal on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy that paves the way for a final accord among the ministers, the European Commission and the European Parliament in June.

The negotiating mandate approved by the ministers on Tuesday continues to change the CAP policy to make it greener, but was watered down from the original commission proposal, Reuters reported.

The ministers voted:

• To allow countries not to apply a proposed cap on annual subsidies to individual farmers of 300,000 euros;
• To delay the abolition of national sugar production quotas until 2017, two years after the deadline of 2015 proposed by the commission but sooner than the 2020 deadline favored by the European Parliament;
• To delete a plan to move to flat-rate, per-hectare subsidies by 2019 to reduce inequality in payments to farmers, Reuters said. Moving to a flat-rate, per-hectare system would have hurt long-term members of the European Union such as France and Italy and helped more recent member countries that have gotten lower subsidies.

Rather than ending the link between subsidies and production levels, governments agreed to increase the level of “coupled” payments in certain areas to 12 percent of total direct subsidies, Reuters said.

Paolo De Castro, an Italian who is chairman of the European Parliament Agriculture committee, welcomed the farm ministers’ agreement and said he looks forward to negotiations with the commission, the European Union’s executive arm, that are expected to start on April 11.