Luxembourg City: Agriculture ministers agreed unanimously on the Council’s negotiating mandate for CAP 2028-2034 at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting of 26 and 27 October 2026, giving the Irish Presidency a position it can now take into talks with the European Parliament. Minister Martin Heydon chaired the meeting and called the result a “blueprint for a flexible and farmer-focused CAP”, according to the Irish government press release.

The ministers approved a partial general approach on the regulation that sets the CAP framework. The CAP 2028-2034 text covers the policy’s own rules but leaves the money and several hard details to the wider negotiation on the 2028-2034 EU budget. The Commission has proposed ring-fencing about 300 billion euros for income support and crisis measures, yet the final sum for farmers depends on the overall budget deal.

Under the structure that CAP 2028-2034 would use, each member state would prepare a single National and Regional Partnership Plan. That plan replaces separate plans for cohesion, agriculture, fisheries, migration, security and the Social Climate Fund. The current two-pillar system, built on the EAGF and the EAFRD, would give way to a single funding structure.

Income support changes name and logic. The Commission proposes a Degressive Area-Based Income Support scheme, known as DABIS, to replace today’s payments. The Council added an option for governments to run a redistributive mechanism inside it, similar to the one in the current policy, and it requires each member state to define an active farmer. Rules on degressivity and capping wait for the horizontal budget talks.

Younger farmers receive specific attention in CAP 2028-2034. Governments must offer higher DABIS support to young farmers and adopt a generational renewal strategy, and the text proposes a starter pack with access to training and advice. Heydon said the position “reinforces the focus on ensuring that support reaches active farmers” while it keeps environmental ambitions.

Other tools in CAP 2028-2034 target risk. Member states may pay crisis support after natural disasters, adverse climatic events and animal or plant disease outbreaks, and they may back insurance and other risk management tools. A farm stewardship framework sets common conditions and incentives for protective practices such as biodiversity and watercourse protection, although the Irish release does not spell out the detailed conditionality rules.

Heydon stressed that “today’s agreement at Council is an important step, but it is not the end of the process.” The mandate opens trilogue negotiations with Parliament and the Commission, yet the sources reviewed give no dates for those talks or for a deal on the 2028-2034 budget. Farm organisations and MEPs will test whether the Council’s flexibility survives the negotiation. The Council lists the meeting on its Agriculture and Fisheries Council page.

For farmers, the practical message is that CAP 2028-2034 now has a Council text but not yet a price tag. The next test is the budget talks, which will decide the 300 billion euro figure, the payment caps and how much support reaches active farms in 2028.