The European community will mobilize tomorrow in Brussels to defend a "strong, well-funded CAP."

The battle in the European countryside against Brussels' policies continues unabated. Once again, the Commission is putting our farmers on the ropes. This time, the discontent revolves around the European Commission's proposal to centralize funds into a single budgetary instrument, jeopardizing "the architecture of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) ." Faced with the possibility that this common policy, with its own budget, could be diluted into a single fund, the Belgian trade union organizations Copa Cogeca and FWA have called on the entire European community to mobilize in Brussels tomorrow, July 16 , to defend a "strong, common, and well-funded CAP."

Under the slogan "no budget, no farmers, no limits, no security," the march coincides with the date the European Commission presents its proposal for the EU's financial perspectives for the period 2028-2034 and for the reform of the CAP . These proposals, they say, provide neither clarity nor guarantees, and which, along with the "continuous silent cuts in agricultural policy ," contrast sharply with President Ursula von der Leyen's stated commitment to the strategic role of agriculture, denounce representatives of farmers and agricultural cooperatives in the EU.

Therefore, they invite "all MEPs who support European agriculture ," as well as farmers and rural workers in general, to join what they call a "symbolic march." They also criticize the fact that the European Commission's deliberations are taking place in the middle of the harvest season.

The Coordinating Committee of Farmers' and Ranchers' Organizations ( COAG ), the Union of Small Farmers and Ranchers ( UPA ) and the Agrarian Association of Young Farmers ( Asaja ), Spanish farmers' organizations, have confirmed their attendance, agreeing that "without a strong, common and well-funded CAP, there is no food security in Europe."

In this sense, the key points of the rural communities' demands lie in the search for guarantees for European food, support for farmers in the Old Continent, and maintaining the stability of Europe's rural community. To achieve this, they assert, the CAP is the essential pillar for protecting food security and, therefore, the continent's strategic focus.

COAG denounces the lack of "clear, structured, and sufficient" support for the ecological, digital, and economic transitions demanded by Brussels. "If the CAP is not financially protected, we run the risk of it collapsing like a house of cards," stressed COAG's representative on the European Economic and Social Committee, Jaume Bernis, in a statement on Monday.

The national president of Asaja, Pedro Barato, expressed a similar sentiment. "This cannot continue." "The CAP must be a tool for the future, not a bureaucratic trap ." "Without profitability, the countryside will wither away." Barato maintains these assertions in the face of the drift in agricultural policies, the lack of profitability on farms, the failure of generational change, and the organizational chaos in the Asturian rural elections, he says.

For its part, the UPA (Spanish National Assembly) demands a "fairer and more socially responsible" distribution focused on family farms . In line with the rest of the Spanish organizations, they reject any attempt to cut and dissolve the CAP into a single fund, the disaggregation into "national envelopes" that would "blur the European strategy," as well as the "hasty" and unilateral presentation, without consulting the agricultural sector, of a new proposal for the post-2027 CAP without budgetary guarantees or clear governance mechanisms.

The event will begin at 2:00 PM in front of Place du Luxembourg, where the march will begin half an hour later to reach the Berlaymont building, the headquarters of the European Commission, where the action will culminate between 3:15 and 4:00 PM.