ELO Warns: Proposed EU Budget Abandons Landowners and Professional Farmers at critical Moment
Author: Dr. Jurgen TACK, ELO Secretary-General
Brussels, July 2025 – The European Commission’s proposal for the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2028–2034 and the future of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) marks a serious retreat from the EU’s foundational commitment to a sustainable, resilient, and common approach to agriculture. The European Landowners’ Organization (ELO) considers this a turning point – one that undermines the future of landowners and professional farmers across Europe.
Less Money, More Uncertainty
The European Commission proposes to increase the total MFF to €1.816 trillion, corresponding to 1.26% of the EU’s Gross National Income (GNI), up from 1.13%. However, once repayments for the post-COVID NextGenerationEU recovery package are factored in, the effective figure drops to 1.15%. This technicality conceals a far more concerning reality: agriculture will receive less.
Only just over €300 billion is earmarked for farming, nearly 30% less in real terms (adjusted for 2025 prices) compared to the current period. This comes at a time when professional farmers and landowners are grappling with unprecedented challenges: inflation, shrinking margins, stricter regulatory demands, geopolitical volatility, and the mounting costs of climate adaptation.
The Commission acknowledges the role of farming in guaranteeing food security, European autonomy, and rural viability, but offers no credible financial foundation to support that vision. Instead, the burden is quietly shifted to Member States and regional authorities, thus relegating to others their own Treaty responsibilities.
An Unravelling of the Common Framework
The most radical – and troubling – aspect of the proposal is the structural shift in governance. CAP programming and delivery would be subsumed under the “National and Regional Partnership” Fund (NRP), a €865 billion package designed to streamline various sectoral policies.
In theory, such integration promises efficiency. In practice, it risks dismantling one of the EU’s most developed and coherent policy areas. For decades, the CAP has functioned on the basis of shared management between the EU and its Member States, ensuring a level playing field for landowners and rural managers irrespective of national political cycles.
Merging the CAP with other funds erodes this stability. It opens the door to politically motivated reallocation, governance complexity, administrative delays, and the loss of strategic continuity. Long-term investments in sustainable land use, biodiversity, or agro-ecological innovation—often championed by landowners—require predictability, not fragmented, short-term programmes.
Implications for Landowners and Professional Farmers
This shift has particularly profound consequences for professional farmers and private landowners, who manage a large share of Europe’s agricultural and natural areas.
1. Greater Co-Financing Responsibilities
The proposal increases the share of farming interventions subject to national or regional co-financing. Wealthier Member States may be able to compensate, but for others – including those with devolved regional competencies – this creates a
patchwork of support levels, distorting competition and weakening cohesion.
2. More Bureaucracy, Less Clarity
Farmers and landowners already face extensive administrative burdens. The increased flexibility for Member States, without clear EU-level benchmarks, will likely translate into multiple and conflicting local interpretations of eligibility, compliance, and implementation.
3. Undermining Long-Term Stewardship
Landowners who invest in landscape conservation, agroforestry, carbon sequestration, or biodiversity restoration rely on stable, multi-annual CAP
frameworks. The proposed model weakens that stability and prioritises short-term deliverables over long-term impact.
4. Loss of EU-Scale Coordination
Many landowners operate across borders or participate in EU-wide certification schemes (such as ELO’s Wildlife Estates Label). These depend on harmonised criteria. By devolving too much discretion to national plans, the Commission risks creating legal and operational fragmentation.
ELO’s Response: A Call to Reinforce, Not Abandon, the CAP
The ELO considers this proposal a fundamental misstep at a time when the EU should be strengthening – not scaling back – its commitment to rural sustainability and strategic autonomy. Agriculture remains a shared EU competence for good reason. Fragmenting its governance undermines one of the few policy tools that directly links European citizens to nature, food, and climate action.
ELO urges EU institutions and Member States to:
1. Re-establish the CAP as a distinct and protected pillar within the EU budget, not
subsumed under generic national partnerships;
2. Guarantee adequate funding, indexed to inflation and reflective of the growing
obligations on land managers to deliver environmental and climate services;
3. Ensure consistency and stability in programme design, allowing landowners and professional farmers to invest with confidence in multi-annual sustainability efforts;
4. Protect the level playing field, maintaining a coherent policy and regulatory framework across all Member States and regions;
5. Recognise the strategic role of landowners, whose stewardship is essential to achieving Europe’s Green Deal and EU’s strategic autonomy goals.
Conclusion: Protecting the Future of Europe’s Land
The current proposal represents not a reform, but a retreat. It sends the wrong signal at a time when Europe’s rural actors need more certainty, more ambition, and more partnership from EU institutions.
Landowners and professional farmers are not asking for favours – they are asking for a framework that enables them to deliver food security, economic resilience, and environmental stewardship.
ELO will continue to defend the principles of a strong, common, and future-oriented agricultural policy. We call on the European Parliament and Council to amend the proposal accordingly and to reaffirm the EU’s responsibility to its land, its farmers, and its citizens.
