Common Agricultural Policy Reform & The 'Golden Ticket'

It has been widely reported over the last few months that the first draft of the Common Agricultural Policy ("CAP") reform was published in Autumn 2011. The reforms are due to come into effect in 2014, but it seems increasingly likely that their implementation will be pushed back to 2015 at the earliest.

The reforms will introduce a new Basic Payment Scheme to replace the existing Single Payment Scheme and will impose new requirements on the claimant in order to be able to qualify for receiving the payment. These changes have been covered in depth elsewhere, but to summarise, the key points are:

The "Golden Ticket" whereby to claim the new payment the claimant must have been a successful claimant in the 2011 Single Payment Scheme year. The introduction of the "active farmer" test under which a claimant's Basic Payment Scheme claim must exceed 5% of their "non-agricultural receipts". "Greening", which imposed...