News

On 09/10/2023, the EP Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) voted its opinion on the proposal for a Directive/Regulation on the sustainable use of pesticides. Committee members first voted on a motion to reject the Commission's proposal outright. The motion to reject was rejected by 17 votes to 23 with 7 abstentions. This was followed by a total of two and a half hours of voting on hundreds of amendments. The final opinion was adopted by 26 votes to 9, with 3 abstentions. The COMAGRI Committee only prepared its own opinion on the Commission proposal, with shared competence on some articles (it had exclusive competence only on the proposal on the use of CAP resources), but the main mandate for preparing the European Parliament's opinion lies with the EP Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (COMENVI). COMENVI is expected to vote on its proposal on 24/10/2023. Anecdotal information so far suggests that COMENVI could meet the planned deadline. No agreement has yet been reached within COMENVI on the definition of sensitive areas, for reduction targets COMENVI is considering 50% for chemical pesticides and risks associated with their use and 65% for more hazardous pesticides, compared to the 2013-2017 average. The targets should be met by 2030. However, discussions in COMENVI are still ongoing, so information is still subject to change.
More information is available here.

The European institutions met in trialogue on 10/10/2023 to discuss the Industrial Emissions Directive. In 2022, the European Commission proposed to include cattle in the scope of the directive and to lower the threshold of livestock units from which farms would be considered industrial. The Council of the European Union, in its opinion, supported keeping cattle in the scope of the Directive, but proposed raising the thresholds originally proposed by the Commission. The European Parliament adopted an opinion calling for the status quo, i.e. for more benign thresholds and the exclusion of cattle from the scope of the Directive. Since July 2023, the European Institutions have started negotiations in trilogues in an attempt to reach a common position which would then constitute the final European rules. However, the main agricultural aspects of the proposal have not been discussed in the 10/10/2023 trialogue, and the European media expect that the agricultural aspects, including the most sensitive issue of including cattle in the scope of the Directive, will not be discussed until the last trialogue, scheduled for 28/11/2023. Given that only three trialogue meetings have been scheduled and that the sensitive agricultural issues have not yet been discussed, the media expect the last trialogue to be very long and difficult.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) issued an opinion on 10/10/2023 on the role of preventive vaccination of poultry against avian influenza virus. According to EFSA, preventive vaccination is the most effective approach to minimise the number of avian influenza outbreaks in poultry and the duration of epidemics. In addition to preventive vaccination, EFSA recommends emergency protective vaccination in the event of an outbreak within three kilometres of areas at risk of transmission, as well as preventive and control measures such as surveillance of birds, early detection of infection, monitoring of vaccine effectiveness or strengthening biosecurity.
More information is available here.

EU Member States voted on 13/10/2023 at the meeting of the Committee on Animals, Plants, Food and Feed (SCOPAFF) on the European Commission's proposal to extend the licence for glyphosate in the European Union for 10 years. In order to be approved, 55% of Member States representing at least 65% of European citizens would have to support the proposal. Only Croatia, Austria and Luxembourg voted against the Commission proposal, while Germany, France, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Belgium and Malta abstained. The rest of the countries voted in favour of extending the licence for ten years as proposed by the Commission. A total of 66% of countries, but representing only 55% of the EU population, voted in favour of the proposal. The Commission's proposal was therefore not approved at this stage because a qualified majority was not reached. The proposal now moves to the Appeals Committee, which is expected to meet in mid-November, two to six weeks after the vote that took place on 13/10/2023 (probably 15/11/2023). Should a qualified majority not be reached even within this committee, the Commission will have to decide on its proposal itself. The decision must be taken by 14/12/2023 as the current authorisation expires on 15/12/2023.
More information is available here and here.

The current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) rules came into force in January this year and will apply until 2027. However, negotiations on what the CAP rules should look like after 2027 have already started. Last week, the agriculture ministers of the German federal republics called for a major and fundamental reform of the CAP. The regional agriculture ministers said that under the future CAP, the EU should abandon "unconditional" area payments and that the rules for paying CAP subsidies should be reformed to allow for the payment of support for the provision of ecosystem and social services - the "common good". According to the Schleswig-Holstein Minister for Agriculture, the future CAP should focus on preserving the social function of agriculture, abandoning direct payments that are only linked to the fulfilment of certain basic conditions. The ministers of Saxony and Lower Saxony and even the Federal Minister for Agriculture, Cem Özdemir, agree. According to the regional ministers, the future CAP should introduce a points-based system for distributing agricultural subsidies - the more measures that are judged to be beneficial to the public that a farm introduces, the more subsidies it should receive. Farmers should be able to choose from different packages of measures. Former Agriculture Commissioner and current MEP Dacian Ciolos (RO, Renew) also supported the idea of abandoning area payments. According to Ciolos, area payments have no future, not only regarding environmental challenges, but also regarding Ukraine's future integration into the European Union. The move away from area payments is also supported by Ukraine. According to Ukrainian Trade Minister Taras Kachka, the next CAP should not reward the largest farms, but instead incentivise a climate and nature-friendly approach. The European Commission has said that the next draft of the rules for the CAP after 2027 will be presented in the second half of 2025, after agreement has been reached on the EU's next multiannual financial framework.
More information is available here and here.