Back in November 2010 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) passed a landmark ruling to provide anonymity to individuals receiving Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments. The ruling states that the existing law is invalid in its obligation "to publish personal data relating to each beneficiary without drawing a distinction based on relevant criteria." The criteria being the amount of each payment, the number of payments made and the period over which they were received.
The ruling does not cover payments made to businesses or commercial land owners. At £48bn in 2010 alone CAP funding represents the single largest expenditure of the total EU budget, fully one-third more than is spent on infrastructure and development. Of this total, 82 percent of payments are awarded to 15 percent of the landowners in the EU. Since the last round of CAP reform was completed in May 2009, all 27 EU member states have been obliged by law to list the value of individual CAP payments along with the names of recipients.
The ruling from the ECJ comes amid mounting pressure from the CAP's largest individual recipients who are unhappy, or embarrassed, at the scale of their payments being made public. The Land 9 reported how the UK government actively postponed the release of CAP funding details in May 2010 until after the general election. At the time The Guardian highlighted the fact that 70 Conservative candidates were receiving some form of CAP payment along with a smattering of Lib Dems and, entertainingly, several UKIP candidates. In February 2011 it emerged that Conservative MP and Environment and Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon received more than £2m in CAP payments over a ten-year period from a 20,000-acre estate in Berkshire.
Following the ECJ ruling, Defra introduced an immediate blackout on all CAP payment details, including those of commercial interests. Jack Thurston of Farmsubsidy.org said "The publication of information about individual subsidy payments reveals nothing about the recipient's private life or personal economic situation. All it says is that they own a business which received a subsidy. It doesn't tell us if the owner of the business is young or old, rich or poor, white, black, gay or straight, or anything that a reasonable person might deem to be personal or private ." There will be no release of CAP payment details this year. Freedom of Information requests have been submitted to English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parliaments for the details to be made public, but don't hold your breath.