News

Sugar industry body CEDUS Le Sucre has attacked what it described as “unacceptable” and “damaging” moves from the French government to “scapegoat” the sugar industry as legislators put in place moves to amend the country’s sugar tax. Read the original article.

The European Commission presented today (27 October) the final Work Programme for Horizon 2020, covering the budgetary years 2018, 2019 and 2020 and representing an investment of around €30 billion. Over the next 3 years, the Commission will seek greater impact of its research funding by focusing on fewer, but critical topics such as migration, security, climate, clean energy and digital economy. Horizon 2020 includes an investment of €1 billion towards knowledge and innovation in agriculture, food and rural development. Read more.

Dairy farmers gathered in front of the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels yesterday (October 26) to demand measures to improve their income security in the face of recurring crises in the dairy sector. They called on the EU executive to establish a volume reduction scheme, legally anchored in the Common Agricultural Policy, to ensure Europe’s milk production responds to fluctuations in price.

The Standing Committee on Plant Animal Food and Feed met earlier on Wednesday (October 25) to discuss renewing the licence for the glyphosate. A debate took place but no vote was taken because of the conflicting positions of the member states. Those EU countries led by the UK, known to be strongly supportive of a full ten-year renewal, refused to put a shorter re-authorisation to vote. The UK, Ireland and Spain are strong supporters of glyphosate and sources explained that they are unlikely to agree to a shorter than 10 years renewal.

Fifty-two new programmes aimed at promoting EU agri-food products in Europe and across the world have been approved by the European Commission. Covering a wide range of foods from dairy products and olive oil to fruit and vegetables and meat products, these programmes are supported by grants from the EU's common agricultural policy budget. Read more.