Europe's farm chief said today that she would need to see strong evidence to justify keeping certain EU subsidies linked to production volumes.
After the EU's mammoth farm reform of 2003, many direct farm payments are no longer linked to the amount that a farmer produces. The idea was to stop surpluses by taking away the incentive to overproduce merely in order to get Brussels' cash.
But part of the tortuous political deal that was negotiated was to allow a stack of exceptions to "decoupling" - EU jargon for breaking the subsidy/production link - either by allowing a partial link or by keeping payments "coupled" in certain areas.
Now, in what is known as the "health check" of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel would like to get rid of the remaining CAP complexities by imposing full subsidy decoupling from 2013.
Many EU countries agree with that idea. But, as usual in EU negotiations, they have already produced national wish-lists of what they would like to see included, or excluded, from the final reform deal that is expected in November.
Ms Fischer Boel said each country had to justify keeping any farm payment coupled after 2013.
"On your requests to exclude various sectors from full decoupling, you would need to convince me about the benefits of maintaining the coupled payments and that there would be very limited risk for distortions of competition," she said.
"Of course, we can examine case-by-case whether the proposed transitional periods are sufficient," she saidf. "One thing should be crystal clear: the decoupling process has to start without any delay and fully applied in 2013 at the latest."