It is understood there was an agreement yesterday in relation to the budget for young farmers in the next CAP.

The European Commission had proposed a 2pc of the CAP's Pillar 1 budget be ringfenced for young farmers, a continuation of current funding levels. However, the European Parliament had demanded the budget be increased to 4pc.

It is understood a compromise of 3pc has now been agreed upon between the Council Presidency and Parliament.

However, little progress was made in relation to the green architecture of the next CAP, with all sides reported to be far apart on key issues.

There has been no agreement yet on Eco Schemes, with a budget compromise between 20-30pc expected.

Negotiators are also tussling over how to ensure the CAP supports small farmers.

One option is to use a stricter definition of "active farmer" recipients. Parliament has said this should halt payments to large-scale processors of agricultural products.

Speaking ahead of the series of talks in Brussels this week, Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue told the Farming Independent that his focus is on delivering as much flexibility for Ireland to make its own decisions.

“As has been the case right throughout these CAP talks, my ambition is on delivering a CAP that will be as farmer-friendly as possible and that will deliver for the needs of our own farmers.

“A one-sized CAP will not fit all farmers and we must ensure that flexibility is granted to individual countries to shape various measures, including those under direct payments.

Pekka Pesonen, secretary-general of European farmers and agri-cooperatives group Copa Cogeca, warned against a "one-size-fits-all" approach and said farmers were being asked to make green investments despite lower subsidies.

The European Environmental Bureau says the CAP plans have no targets for reducing agricultural emissions and says firm rules are needed to keep EU countries in line.

Some of the main issues where the co-legislators’ positions are not aligned and on which ministers will focus during the Council debate can be grouped as follows:

• Green architecture: this includes the nature of eco-schemes and the possible ring-fencing of specific amounts for these new instruments.
• Targeting of payments: this includes questions regarding the definitions of ‘active farmer’ and ‘new farmer’, the voluntary or obligatory reduction of payments (capping), voluntary or mandatory payments for small farmers, optional or obligatory redistributive payments and other provisions.
• New delivery model: this includes questions on the number of result indicators to be used for the performance review of the CAP strategic plans, conditionality controls and the simplification of the model.
• Market management and exceptional measures: this includes questions on public interventions and private storage aids, tariffs on trade with third countries, competition rules and other provisions.
• Crisis management measures: this includes the use of the crisis reserve fund (introduced in the 2013 CAP reform) and how it should be financed.