Mutual Funds and the Income Stabilisation Tool in the EU: Retrospect and Prospects

Higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events have increased farmers' risk exposure, which has increased the need for integrated risk management. EU Regulation No. 1305/2013 allows subsidies for insurance instruments, for mutual funds compensating production losses, and for mutual funds to compensate for income losses. The EU toolkit in this respect has been largely under‐utilised, and an integrated EU policy for risk management has not been developed. Comparing the situation in different EU Member States leads to conclusions on options for EU policymakers to consider. The existing EU technical documents explaining the content and details do not provide clear explanations and interpretation of the current regulations and so more efficient guidelines for Mutual Funds and sectoral Income Stabilisation Tools should be developed. This could be facilitated by establishing a platform for public consultation, knowledge sharing and learning which would include stakeholders, farmers unions' representatives and academics, to help the process of building shared experiences or even common benchmarks. The platform would be part of a dissemination and innovation effort to capitalise knowledge in a learning curve and would act as a catalyst for the implementation of MFs and ISTs.