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Tue 15 October 2024| View online Estimated reading time: 4-5 minutes |
| | | | Member states yesterday (14 October) endorsed Council conclusions urging the Commission to propose an “integrated EU wide Action Plan” to combat desertification, land and soil degradation, and drought. Meanwhile, next week the Parliament and Council are expected to start negotiations on the soil monitoring law.
Principles and policy The Council conclusions warn that more needs to be done to reach the EU's target of land degradation neutrality (LDN) by 2030. To this end, the document recommends transforming agriculture and food systems in line with the principles of agroecology.
The story of a key piece of legislation to combat land and soil degradation, the Soil Monitoring Law, shows how precarious the process of translating principles into policy can be. On 21 October, MEPs are expected to give the green light to the final stage of the adoption process - negotiations with the Council - on a text that only partially reflects the original ambitions. In July last year, the Commission proposed a framework to bring all soils in the EU to a "healthy state" by 2050 (crucial for food production, CO2 sequestration and biodiversity), requiring member states to measure, monitor and assess soil health, sustainable soil management and mandatory remediation of contaminated sites.
The Parliament, in its position adopted in the last month of its 2019-24 mandate with elections looming, exempted national capitals from some of the obligations. In June, the Council maintained the 2050 target, but prioritised soil sealing and soil degradation as the easiest aspects to monitor, with no penalties for member states that fail to comply.
Both the Parliament and the Council rejected the certification schemes, the requirement for reporting at regional level and limited the Commission's powers for secondary legislation. During the negotiations, the soil law may also face strong opposition from business, as other green legislation has in recent years.
If there are no "fundamental changes", the legislative process "should be suspended", German business associations including farmers, industry, mining, fertilisers, and building materials warned in a joint statement on 2 October, pointing to the "bureaucratic burden" of the proposed measures. |
| | | Commission manages expectations on Strategic Dialogue |
| At a public hearing yesterday (14 October), the Commission reminded MEPs from the Agriculture (AGRI) committee – and some from the Environment (ENVI) committee – that the conclusions of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture will influence the Commission’s vision for the sector, but are not set in stone. “It is [up to] the new College to decide on the exact content of this vision,” said Wolfgang Burtscher, director-general at the Commission’s DG Agri.
The future EU agriculture chief, potentially Luxembourg’s Christophe Hansen, is expected to prepare the roadmap “under the guidance” of Commission President von der Leyen, by March 2025. Burtscher told MEPs that the EU executive would build on the Strategic Dialogue’s report “as [on] many other reports and evidence that we will gather by then".
In their interventions, MEPs not only clashed over the content of the report – particularly on the sustainability front – but also expressed concerns about the format of the debate. Lawmakers from several political groups, including the EPP’s Herbert Dorfmann and S&D’s Dario Nardella, regretted that the chair of the stakeholder forum, Professor Peter Strohschneider, was not present to answer questions and instead joined the meeting online for a keynote speech.
But Peter Meedendorp, who took part in the Strategic Dialogue as president of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), reminded MEPs that the final report was written by the stakeholders in the roundtable, not the professor. “The recommendations are not delegitimised by his absence,” he said. |
| Environmental organisations’ approach to an agri-ETS |
| The NGO coalitions European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and Methane Matters yesterday (14 October) published a paper with recommendations on how to set up an emissions trading scheme (ETS) for the farming sector.
The document builds upon a 2023 study commissioned by the Commission's DG Climate and highlights the potential of such a system to create price signals to shift towards more sustainable production and consumption. However, due to its “technical” and “political” complexity, the paper says an agri-ETS would not be operational before 2030.
Recommendations include increasing the accountability of fertiliser producers, who are already covered by the ETS1, introducing an on-farm livestock ETS linked to livestock units (LSUs) and exempting smaller farms, and including agriculture and fisheries vehicles in the ETS2, which covers fossil fuels in road transport. The paper also recommends separating land carbon sequestration from the emissions reduction scheme. |
| | | Animal welfare NGOs protest against farm cages |
| Yesterday (14 October), the End the Cage Age coalition, which organised a European Citizens' Initiative that far passed the 1 million signatures threshold, organised an event outside the Parliament to increase pressure on the Commission to deliver on its promise to propose legislation to ban the use of cages for various farm animals. “Five years ago we called for the same, we were very close and, sadly, especially on cages, (...) the Commission faulted,” said Renew’s MEP Martin Hojsík, who attended the protest.
Last December, the EU executive presented only a fraction of the promised animal welfare package, which did not include a ban on farm cages. According to the mission letter of the commissioner-designate for health, Hungary’s Olivér Várhelyi, animal welfare rules will be “modernised” in the next mandate.
The Left’s MEP Anja Hazekamp also joined yesterday’s event and called on the EU executive to come up with a proposal soon. “Animals have waited too long,” she said. |
| Euroseeds congress highlights challenges in the sector |
| The European seed industry lobby is holding its 2024 Congress in Copenhagen this week, where experts yesterday (14 October) gave an overview of the market situation in 2024. Panellists pointed to a decline in sunflower production - with yield prospects around the Black Sea “severely depressed” and seed and oil prices on the rise -, and stagnating soybean production since 2008, for which they called for new incentives and technologies. |
| | | EUDR delay to be 'no more than 1 year', Commission says |
| The postponement of the entry into force of the EU's anti-deforestation regulation (EUDR) will not last more than a year, Commission official Sarah Nelen told MEPs in an ENVI committee debate yesterday. It will take "one year, no more" to adopt the technical criteria for implementation, Nelen said, adding that reopening the regulation was "an exceptional step due to the [complex] nature of the legislation".
The committee did not object to the decision of the political group coordinators to adopt the urgency procedure and approve the amendment delay as soon as possible. The urgency procedure is expected to be announced at next week's plenary session and voted on at the following session, (13-14 November). |
| | | | Berlin – NGOs and farmers criticizes animal husbandry labelling extension A proposal by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) to introduce animal welfare labelling for beef has sparked criticism from NGOs, farmers and the food industry. The move is a new and decisive step in enforcing the Animal Husbandry Labelling Act, which was introduced on a voluntary basis for pork in 2023. However, the German Animal Welfare Federation has stated that the new labelling cannot be introduced as there are "no legal requirements for cattle that could serve as a reference value". Meanwhile, the farmers association DBV said that the "errors" made with pork must be corrected before the labelling can be extended.
Sofia – Ministry announces support for rural areas The Bulgarian Agriculture and Food Minister Georgi Tahov has announced BGN 1 billion (about €510 million) of investment in municipalities under the CAP Strategic Plan. Speaking at the annual conference of Bulgarian municipalities, Tahov stressed that projects in rural areas to modernise road and street infrastructure, water supply and energy efficiency were a priority for Sofia. The government has increased support from the Rural Development Fund for energy efficiency and will make BGN 740 million (almost €400 million) available in January 2025.
Warsaw – Funding for rural renewable energy programme tripled EIB financing has enabled the Polish Ministry of Agriculture to increase the budget for the "Energy for the Countryside" programme from 1 to 3 billion zlotys (€700 million), the ministry said in a press release. The budget increase is a "response to the great interest in the programme among farmers", it added. The applications submitted in response to the first call for applications, which mainly concerned support for the construction of agricultural biogas plants, almost doubled the total budget. |
| | | | | Today’s brief was brought to you by Euractiv’s Agrifood team |
| | | Today’s briefing was prepared by the Agrifood team; Angelo Di Mambro, Maria Simon Arboleas, Sofia Sanchez Manzanaro, and Hugo Struna. Share your feedback or information with us at digital@euractiv.com. |
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