News

The European Parliament's rapporteur for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)’s transitional regulations, Elsi Katainen (Renew, FI), said last week that the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission were approaching an agreement in a joint negotiation on the form of the transition period. Agreement was reached on several key issues, including internal convergence (Commission rejects mandatory) and the length of the transition period (Council and Parliament support two years, the Commission has not yet supported two years last week). According to Katainen, however, an agreement could be reached as early as 30/06/2020.
More information is available here.

Last month, the European Court of Auditors issued a report stating that current CAP rules are not enough to halt the loss of biodiversity. The European Statistical Office (Eurostat) came up with a similar report last week. According to Eurostat, biodiversity suffers mainly from ongoing efforts to boost agricultural production. The diversity of birds on agricultural land decreased by 28.3% between 1990 and 2018. According to Eurostat, the intensification of agriculture has reduced nesting habitats, including hedges, wetlands and meadows; agrochemicals and changes in plowing timing have disrupted bird habits and reduced their available food resources.
More information is available here.

Austrian Agriculture Minister Elisabet Köstinger said on 23/06/2020 that the EU Biodiversity Strategy was losing logical coherence. Köstinger called on the Commission to carry out an impact assessment on the individual objectives of the Strategy. According to Köstinger, some of the objectives set out by the Commission in the Strategy may not lead to the strengthening of biodiversity, for example, including the target of leaving 10% of agricultural land for non-productive elements. On the contrary, the implementation of this objective could strengthen imports from third countries.

Last week, the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, who is responsible for implementing the European Green Deal, supported the development of precision agriculture. According to Timmermans, this could help the agricultural sector to move towards more environmentally friendly practices. Timmermans also said that the European Union must redouble its efforts to move towards sustainable food systems, drawing attention to the low quality of production on some large, intensive production farms. Timmermans supported the development of laboratory-produced meat and stated that, in the future, livestock fed with feed from third countries should not be considered sustainable.

On 23/06/2020, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Janusz Wojciechowski responded to a letter from the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development to strengthening assistance to the wine sector in times of crisis. Wojciechowski has promised a new separate supplementary package for wine producers, which should include modified distillation and storage measures and derogations from certain competition rules. The Commission is also reportedly considering strengthening flexibility for the fruit and vegetable sector.