The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, has expressed this Monday his confidence that a "reasonable" Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will finally be reached, supported by the "effort" being made by various sectors, including the agricultural, economic, and political spheres.
During the inauguration ceremony for the expansion of the production center of the company 'Pernod Ricard' in the town of Las Labores, in the province of Ciudad Real, the head of the regional executive announced that Castilla-La Mancha will defend in July one of the pillars that, in his opinion, justify why the CAP "cannot collapse".
"I believe that half of the disaster that the European Commission's first proposal represented has already been salvaged, and we objectively believe that we can move forward to the point of achieving a reasonable CAP which, in this region, means many things, but also means the guarantee for Europe of having autonomy and food sovereignty."
García-Page emphasized that this food sovereignty is "only missed when there is the war in Ukraine or with COVID," but that it is "finally forgotten when times are sweeter in international trade."
In this context, he remarked that, in the case of Castilla-La Mancha, "in the cake of wealth," the countryside, agriculture, livestock farming, and all the processing industry "weighs more today than 10 or 20 years ago," even "breaking economic manuals" that maintained that the primary sector should lose weight compared to industrial development.
"We have truly turned the countryside into a great extraordinary industry that, moreover, is also achieving extraordinary levels of innovation, and the European Union has also helped a lot to go further in this regard."
He also highlighted that, throughout this month of June, Castilla-La Mancha will proceed to disburse an additional 90 million euros within the framework of the common agricultural policy, which implies, he specified, that "by June we will have exceeded the disbursement of the CAP in the entire region, which was 650 million euros."
As he pointed out, this data shows that "the CAP we are now managing was better negotiated than the previous one" and "challenges us" —he affirmed— "to fight tooth and nail for the European Commission's proposal regarding the common agricultural policy to collapse."