Strugała highlights the importance of providing adequate life conditions for rural areas

During last Friday’s (March 22nd) NAT commission, the members held a debate on future of CAP and the CoR draft opinion with Janusz Wojciechowski, European Commissioner for Agriculture, and major stakeholders of the agri-food value chain. As the recent farmers’ demonstrations have proven, one important point of contention regarding the CAP is the life conditions of rural areas in general and of agricultural sector workers in particular.

In the framework of this debate, the European Alliance (EA) group’s coordinator at NAT and mayor of Jaraczewo (PL), Dariusz Strugała, highlighted the importance of ensuring decent living conditions in rural areas so that they are similar to those in cities, particularly for “Young farmers […] as they are the new generation”.

This effort is strongly linked to the CAP’s second pillar which, as Strugała stressed, “should be closely linked to other policies as well and cannot be funded solely from the CAP”. In that sense, he indicated the need “to use other funds such as the Cohesion Funds” to assure the necessary infrastructure that guarantees acceptable life conditions in the countryside also for young people.