Begrenzung der Transferzahlungen im Rahmen der Agenda 2000 : Ausgestaltungsmöglichkeiten und Wirkungen

Within Agenda 2000 restrictions of compensation payments per farm are proposed. Beside of that member states will have the opportunity to restrict income transfers related to labour input (modulation) or with regard to environmental standards (cross-compliance). With regard to these regulations, alternative measures have been proposed, e.g. ceilings with regard to the "real" or "standard" labour input and degressive payments depending on farm size or the level of payments. The objective of this paper is to assess economic impacts of the different options and to work out a system which is better targeted and which would have less structural implications. The assessment is based on model calculations for about 1000 farms representing the farm structural conditions of German agriculture. Results show that ceilings based on labour input are not at all target oriented. Ceilings based on the "real" working capacity have strong negative economic impacts on medium sized and large arable farms. Restrictions based on standardised labour requirements - depending on the specificaiton of labour coefficients - affect both, small as well as large farms. Relative income losses in farms entitled to income transfers of 10.000 DM might be the same as those for farms requiring more than 1 Mio. DM. Due to high labour coefficients for dairy cows dairy farms will not be affected by the system. Degressive payments proposed in the Agenda give strong incentives to split up large farm into smaller ones. With regard to the above mentioned problems an alternative system of degressive payments oriented at the taxation of incomes is proposed. The system includeds the following elements: a base component for which payments are not reduced, a degressive zone in which payments are progressively reduced and an upper limit of the rate of reduction. The coefficents of this system should be determined with regard to policy objectives. Model calculations prove, that such a system is much more targeted than the others, can be handled without problems and has less negative structural implications. It can easily be extended to a degression of transfers over time.