EU CAP draft signals some progress on animal welfare but lacks structural ambition

While the draft report presented by rapporteur Norbert Lins in the European Parliament’s AGRI Committee contains welcome provisions, it falls well short of the structural reforms needed to build a resilient future for both farmers and animals. 

Among its positives, FOUR PAWS welcomes the recognition of animal welfare as a strategic investment supporting resilience, competitiveness and long-term viability of livestock farming. The report also reintroduces ring-fenced funding for agri-environmental, climate and animal welfare actions (AECA), explicitly including animal welfare alongside environmental and climate goals (although no funding percentage has yet been set, pending agreement on the overall CAP budget). 

These positive elements do not, however, outweigh the report's shortcomings. Europe's livestock sector is already under severe economic and structural pressure, threatening its long-term viability. The recent heatwave, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands of farmed animals in France alone, and sharply reduced dairy production, laid bare the economic costs of inadequate resilience. The CAP should be actively driving the sector's transition to more resilient and competitive production systems. Instead, the draft report: 

Makes the six CAP priority areas (art. 4), including animal welfare, optional rather than mandatory, allowing Member States to continue underfunding them within the CAP.  

Removes degressivity, raises mandatory capping to €500,000 and reintroduces redistributive payment (art. 6), despite continued evidence that funds remain disproportionately concentrated among large, sometimes foreign-owned, holdings, reducing funding available for targeted public goods, including animal welfare. 

Deletes the mandatory nature of interventions supporting the voluntary transition to resilient production systems (art. 10), hampering the shift towards extensive, mixed and other resilient farming systems. 

Limits the AECA ring-fencing to rural development expenditure (art. 10), reducing ambition compared with the current CAP, which ring-fences funding under both income support and rural development. 

Addressing these shortcomings is necessary but won’t be enough. Even a strengthened CAP cannot, on its own, finance the scale of transformation needed to build a more resilient livestock sector. With growing demands placed on a limited CAP budget, public funding must be complemented by tools capable of leveraging private investment. 

FOUR PAWS therefore calls for an additional tool under the 2028–2034 CAP: the ‘Animal Welfare Roadmap' - a long-term investment planning tool designed to guide the transition of our livestock sector to higher-welfare, more sustainable and climate-resilient production systems. 

Improving animal welfare is not only an ethical imperative, it also strengthens the health and resilience of livestock systems by reducing avoidable losses, improving disease prevention and helping farmers adapt to climate-related risks. 

 The Roadmap would set a transparent, science-based pathway towards progressively higher animal welfare standards over a long-term horizon. It would provide farmers and public authorities with a clear direction, enabling a gradual, predictable and economically manageable transition. The standards would be grounded on the best available science, while remaining flexible enough to reflect regional, economic and technological realities.

As discussions continue in the European Parliament, FOUR PAWS urges the AGRI Committee to address these shortcomings but – above all - introduce a legal basis for an Animal Welfare Roadmap to enable the necessary transformation of the livestock sector.  

ENDS 

For more information about the Animal Welfare Roadmap, please contact Florence Dossche, Lobbying & Advocacy Senior Specialist for CAP <Florence.Dossche@four-paws.org> +32 470 13 98 41