IP/09/1781 Brussels, 20 November 2009 CAP simplification: Commission to take on further simplification projects Today, the European Commission's Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development issued a report with the reactions to the 39 simplification suggestions which Member States jointly submitted to the Commission in April. The working document provides information on the outcome of the assessment process and a state-of-play on the progress made since March 2009.The report will be discussed during the Agriculture Council in December. "European farmers should not be held back by unnecessarily complicated rules and red tape, in particular in the current economic climate," said Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development. "This report is testimony to the fact that we stand by this approach. We don't just pay lip service to simplification, we mean business." The majority of the 39 proposals received a positive assessment. The Commission envisages taking these forward and implementing them swiftly. In fact, a number of the suggestions have already been advanced and are included in the revised rules for direct payments, which will apply from 1 January 2010. The Commission working document also presents a range of additional ideas for simplification, such as more straightforward promotional programmes for agricultural products. It considers the possible elimination of the rules on voluntary beef labelling and raises the possibility of harmonising payment deadlines of certain Rural Development measures with those of Direct Payments. The Commission has been focusing on simplifying the CAP since the first Communication on the issue was published in 2005. Its activities are fully embedded in the overall strategy on Better Regulation, which, among others, targets a 25 percent cut in administrative burden by 2012. The report is available at: http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/simplification/index_en.htm