News

Italian MEP Paolo De Castro (S&D) and Romanian MEP Dacian Cioloş (President of Renew Europe), tabled an amendment to Parliament's draft opinion on the CAP transition period at the end of the last month. The rapporteur for this opinion is Finnish MEP Elsi Katainen (Renew). According to De Castro and Cioloş, the existing greening measures under the current Common Agricultural Policy should be extended to include new measures, given the need to combat climate change. According to De Castro and Cioloş, new measures could include the use of nitrification and precision agriculture to increase the proportion of legumes in temporary grassland, use feed supplements for cattle to reduce ammonia production, or boost milk yield through genetics. The draft opinion and individual amendments in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development should be put to the vote at the end of April 2020. More information is available here.

The Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission (DG AGRI) confirmed Austrian candidate Wolfgang Burtscher as Director General, replacing the Polish predecessor Jerzy Plewa. Burtscher has already worked for DG AGRI from 2005 to 2009 as Director responsible for audits of agricultural policy expenditure.

Commissioner for Environment Virginijus Sinkevichius, together with the Director General of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Inger Andersen, launched the International Coalition for the Protection of Biodiversity on 03/03/2020. The Coalition brings together over 200 world aquariums, zoos, and national parks to raise awareness of the problem of biodiversity loss and the campaign against plastic pollution. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) called on the European Commission to publish an assessment of the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy on biodiversity. The document has already been prepared by the Commission but has not yet been published. The European Commission should publish impact assessments at the end of March, together with the Farm to Fork Strategy and the Biodiversity Strategy. More information is available here.

Italy sent a letter to the European Commission asking for mandatory introduction of country of origin labelling on the packaging of all foodstuffs. Currently, this obligation applies only to fresh meat. According to representatives of the Italian government, the country of origin marking should become one of the key aspects of the new Farm to Fork Strategy. According to the unofficial proposals of the Farm to Fork Strategy, the European Commission could consider extending the country of origin labelling to meat, milk and dairy products. Italy also requested the Commission to extend the provisional national rules on origin marking on milk, cheese, processed meat, pasta, rice and tomato packaging from the original date (end of April 2020) until the end of 2021. More information is available here.

Poland adopted a new law aimed at combating food waste; the law came into force at the beginning of March 2020. Polish traders are now obliged to donate unsold food, food must not be thrown away anymore. A fine of EUR 0,02 should be imposed on traders per kilogram of food thrown away. In the meantime, the regulation only concerns larger shops (over 400 square meters), but in the future Poland should extend the legislation to small retailers as well. More information is available here.