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Norbert Lins (EPP, DE), Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI), sent last week a letter to Janusz Wojciechowski, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, asking him to take emergency measures to help pig farmers in the European Union. The letter states that failure to take additional measures to support them will undermine Europe's own green and sustainable food system. The combination of high input prices, the African swine fever epidemic, but also the decline in demand for European pork from third countries have created extremely difficult conditions for European farmers. According to the letter, the situation pushed profit margins to a critically low level. The European Commission should therefore step up its promotion of European pig meat and find an outlet for surplus European production. Continued inaction, according to the letter, would lead to further concentration of EU pork production and the creation of heavy industrial pork production centres with all the negative effects on the environment, climate and regionalization, which runs counter to the goals and ambitions of the Green Deal and Farm to Fork strategy.
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On 31/01/2022, French Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie confirmed France's intention to allocate €270 million to support pig farmers in France. He decided to provide extraordinary support to the sector following demonstrations organized by farmers in Brittany. In total, there will be three emergency aid packages - €75 million will be released in the first wave, the maximum amount of aid per applicant / farm will be €15,000, support will be available in two to three weeks; In the second wave, probably at the turn of April and May 2022, another €175 million will be released. The last €20 million should be earmarked for exemption from social / health insurance fees. According to the minister, the current crisis, due to soaring feed costs and low pork prices, is probably one of the most serious which the pig sector has experienced over many years.

The European Parliament's committees on agriculture and rural development (COMAGRI) and on the environment, public health and food safety (COMENVI) held a public hearing on 25/01/2022 to present impact studies on the implementation of the Farm to Fork objectives. Representatives of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) spoke at the public hearing, which was the first to address the possible impacts of the Farm to Fork implementation. The USDA submitted its study as early as November 2020, dealing with the calculation of possible impacts in three scenarios, i.e., that the targets will be implemented only by the EU; the EU and the USA; or that it will be implemented worldwide. The results of the impact study vary depending on the scenario, but if implemented in the EU alone, according to the USDA, production would fall by 12%, exports would fall by 20%, farmers' incomes would fall by 16% and food prices would rise by 17%. European GDP would fall by € 63 billion. The Dutch Wageningen University has also recently carried out detailed impact assessments (the first Wageningen study was published in the second half of 2021, focusing on the EU as a whole). The new study focused on assessing the impact of the implementation of the Farm to Fork objectives on selected agricultural commodities in selected EU countries. According to the results, for example, corn yields in France would fall by 7% or apple production in Poland by up to 50%.

On 28/01/2022, the European Commission issued guidelines on the identification and designation of new protected natural areas in the European Union and on the management of existing and future protected areas. It is a follow-up to the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 presented in May 2020, which set a non-legally binding target to support EU biodiversity recovery. To achieve this goal, according to the strategy, at least 30% of the land and 30% of the sea in the EU should be protected by 2030. In addition, according to the strategy, one third of the EU's territory, i.e., areas of high biodiversity and climate importance, both on land and at sea, should be strictly protected. According to the European Commission, the newly adopted guidelines will help member states to achieve these goals and create a coherent transnational network. According to the Commission, the current network of legally protected areas is not large enough to protect biodiversity. Subsequent announcements should either contribute to the Natura 2000 network or be part of national protection regimes. The 2030 targets apply to the EU, with each member state designating areas for protection based on objective ecological criteria and the quantity and quality of its own biodiversity.
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Following the informal meeting of environment and energy ministers in Amiens on 20-22/20/2022, French Environment Minister Barbara Pompili said that most EU environment ministers could support an extension of the planned new rules to combat with deforestation. According to Pompili, the member states are willing to go beyond the European Commission's proposals. According to the deforestation regulation being prepared by the European Commission, companies should declare that the products they want to import into the EU do not come from areas where deforestation is taking place. These include beef, wood, palm oil, soy, coffee, and cocoa. Several proposals to extend the scope of the regulation to other commodities, such as rubber trees, and to consider the impact of these productions on non-forest ecosystems, in particular carbon-rich soils such as pastures and wetlands, will be discussed in the coming weeks.
More information is available here.