News

On 16/10/2023, environment ministers from European Union countries adopted the EU's position for the upcoming United Nations climate negotiations at COP28. Member States supported the goal of tripling global renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030. In addition, the EU will aim to achieve a largely fossil-free global energy system by 2050 and a fully or largely decarbonised energy system by 2030. The UN COP28 summit will take place in November/December 2023.
More information is available here and here.

The European Commission is expected to issue a strategy or communication on the European Protein Strategy in the first half of 2024. The European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) has prepared an own-initiative opinion, which was approved by the Committee in mid-September 2023, and which should serve as a background document for the European Commission in preparing the final strategy or communication (form not yet known). The opinion of the COMAGRI Committee was submitted to the plenary of the European Parliament for approval on 19/10/2023. The European Parliament supported the sustainable production of all available proteins, but in particular plant and animal proteins, and recognised the role of animal production in the circular economy and the role of animal proteins in human nutrition. MEPs rejected a proposal to reduce the production and consumption of meat from farm animals, which was put directly to the plenary vote by a group of MEPs from the Greens, the Left and part of the S&D political groups. The European Parliament stressed the importance of adopting alternative proteins and of sufficient consumer information. According to the European Parliament, the production of vegetable and alternative proteins must meet consumer expectations, which must lead to further improvements in the functionality of these proteins in terms of taste, structure, nutritional value and price. The Parliament's opinion also touched on laboratory-grown imitation foods. The entry of laboratory-grown imitations on the European market is currently governed by the EU Novel Food Regulation (no application has yet been submitted). However, according to the Parliament's new position, laboratory-grown foods, which are produced by culturing cells isolated from plants and animals, present ethical, social, environmental and economic challenges and the Novel Food Regulation is therefore not sufficient to assess them. In this context, Parliament also believes that the interests and expectations of consumers must be better taken into account. The opinion was adopted by 305 votes to 129, with 69 abstentions.
More information is available here.

Last week, a coalition of 11 EU member states proposed to abolish the national reduction targets in the European Commission's proposal to halve the sustainable use of pesticides and the risks associated with their use by 2030. The European Commission's June 2022 proposal proposed reduction targets of 50% at both European and national level (with some consideration of the baseline situation in a member state, but no reduction target could be less than 35%). But the coalition of countries - the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Poland and Romania - called for the proposal on sustainable pesticide use to be redrafted so that the reference to national reduction targets is dropped altogether. According to these countries, mandatory national reduction targets are unfair because they penalise countries that have already significantly reduced their use of pesticides or use less pesticides in general. Instead of national targets, the coalition believes that each Member State should describe in its National Action Plan the measures that should contribute to achieving the Union's pesticide reduction targets by 2030. The coalition also proposes to delete the reference to the specific methodology for calculating national targets from the Commission proposal. Regarding the mentioned proposed measures, how the member states should contribute to the European goal, the coalition states that these measures should be based on reliable scientific and statistical data. This should include, for example, ensuring food security, the availability of economically and technically adequate non-chemical alternatives, as well as a list of pest species occurring in individual member states. According to the coalition, it should be possible to modify the measure.
More information is available here.

Swedish MEP Jessica Polfjärd (EPP), rapporteur for the EP Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (COMENVI), has presented the Committee's draft opinion on new genomic techniques. According to Polfjärd's proposal, the proposal to ban the use of new genomic techniques in organic farming should be abolished, as should the requirement to label seeds obtained using new genomic techniques. The rapporteur will formally present her report to the COMENVI members on 07/11/2023, after which amendments can be tabled until 15/11/2023. The vote on the opinion in the COMENVI committee, which has the main mandate for preparing the Parliament's opinion, is tentatively scheduled for 11/01/2024. The EP Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI), where the rapporteur is Czech MEP Veronika Vrecionová (ECR), is also preparing its own opinion for the COMENVI committee. Veronika Vrecionová is expected to present her draft COMAGRI opinion to the Committee on 26/10/2023, with a vote on this opinion tentatively scheduled for 11/12/2023 or 14/12/2023 in COMAGRI.

On 11/10/2023, the European Commission published two new risk management and strategic foresight tools to improve the Union's ability to combat drought and water scarcity. These are the "European Drought Impact Database" and the "European Drought Risk Atlas", tools that are part of the strategy to support European action on drought and will be integrated into the Copernicus European Drought Observatory. The tools should help national and European authorities to anticipate and manage drought and water scarcity risks at European, national and regional level. Based on the information and data available so far, the risk of drought is expected to increase significantly over the next decade, according to the European Drought Risk Atlas. While different European regions will be affected differently, the impact of drought is forecast to be felt throughout the European Union. As drought becomes more widespread, concerns about reduced crop yields and the health of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are also growing.
More information is available here and here.