The asylum agency coordinates the implementation of the EU’s migration policy among member countries, including asylum applications and deportations.

Members of the European Parliament who scrutinized the agency’s 2023 accounts wrote that the legislature “strongly deplores the weaknesses in the management of conflicts of interest within the agency.”

The approval of the accounts is non-binding but allows the Parliament to issue recommendations to EU bodies on how to handle their budgets.

Following an exchange with the agency’s executive director, Nina Gregori, lawmakers on the Committee on Budgetary Control voted to greenlight the accounts, albeit with a formal reprimand and demands for changes to the agency’s management. The accounts still need to be ratified in the plenary in October.

Lawmakers recommended that the agency establish an independent internal ethics body, strengthen its whistle-blowing protection rules, and publish an anonymized version of the OLAF report.

The Parliament also instructed the agency to establish an exit interview program to identify why there is such high turnover among staff, and to report back to lawmakers on the results during the 2024 accounts discharge procedure.

MEPs vowed to continue their close scrutiny of the agency, especially of its implementation of the recommendations of its supervisory board. Despite the findings of the OLAF report, the board decided not to launch disciplinary procedures against top management and opted for structural reforms within the agency.

Green MEP Erik Marquardt, the lead negotiator on the file, did not reply to a request for comment.

In the draft resolution adopted by the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee (AGRI) by 38 votes to 8 and with 2 abstentions, MEPs call for further flexibility and support for farmers in complying with common agricultural policy (CAP) rules.

Environmental requirements

MEPs backed a series of changes to introduce more flexibility into how farms can abide by the CAP’s environmental rules.

More specifically, they agreed that not only farms that are certified as entirely organic, but also farms where only some parts are certified as organic and farms situated in special conservation areas, should be automatically considered as meeting some of the requirements to maintain land in good agricultural and environmental condition (GAEC).

To protect the environment and biodiversity, MEPs want to prolong even further the time it takes for grassland to be considered permanent. This is partly to discourage farmers from ploughing it, for arable use, just before the end of the period. The proposal is to expand the definition of permanent grassland to include land that has not been included in the crop rotation and has not been ploughed, tilled or reseeded for at least seven years, or land that was not classified as arable as of 1 January 2023.

Crisis payments

The AGRI Committee is against the proposed new type of direct payment for farmers who have been affected by natural disasters. However, the MEPs agree with the new crisis payment under rural development funds proposed by the Commission, and add animal disease outbreaks to the list of events whose impact on farmers could justify such aid.

The adopted text also proposes to lower the threshold of average annual production or income in losses, from at least 20%, proposed by the Commission, to at least 15%, so that more farmers are eligible for national financial contributions to premiums for insurance schemes or to mutual funds.

Small farmers and changes to strategic plans

MEPs propose to increase maximum limits for the support of small farmers: an annual payment to up to €5,000 (rather than the proposed €2,500) and a new one-off payment for business development up to €75,000.

MEPs also want to shorten the time the Commission would have to approve member states’ requests to make strategic amendments to national strategic plans, from three to two months.

Quote

Rapporteur André Rodrigues (S&D, PT) said: “This report is an important step that farmers across Europe have long been waiting for. By cutting red tape and making the CAP rules clearer and more workable, we are delivering solutions that allow farmers to do what they do best – produce – and that can support the sector in these turbulent times. This will help farmers and, in turn, hopefully also enable consumers to continue to access quality, safe and more affordable products.”

Next steps

The report adopted by AGRI is expected to be put to a vote during the 6 – 9 October plenary session. Talks with member states are set to start immediately afterwards, to potentially enable the final adoption of the new rules during a November plenary session.

Background

The Commission presented a simplification package of the current CAP on 14 May 2025. This flowed from recommendations from the strategic dialogue on the future of agriculture, which called for simplification to alleviate excessive administrative reporting and regulatory burdens on farmers and other agri-food actors.

The AGRI Committee used a simplified procedure where MEPs tabled amendments directly to the Commission proposal.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen today backed a call to set a minimum age for accessing social media.

Many European Union countries “believe the time has come for a ‘digital majority age’ for access to social media. And I must tell you, as a mother of seven children, and grandmother of five, I share their view,” she said during an event at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

EU countries like Greece, France and Denmark have been pushing to set a digital age of majority in recent months, arguing that social media causes harms to minors.