Updates from the EU Commission, Council and Parliament
No other part of the economy is so deeply influenced by European Union rules as farming, which is subject to the Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP. Agriculture covers 175 million hectares of Europe and shapes the landscape like no other activity. […]
Several organisation representing farmers and environmentalists came together in Brussels to protest against the Mercosur trade deal yesterday. Responding to a call from the Belgian farmers group FUGEA, farmers and activists gathered outside the European Commission to protest against the threat posed by Mercosur to farmer incomes, the environment, and the rights of indigenous peoples in South America. […]
While the next CAP reform is still in discussion at the Council, and the European Parliament has not yet taken a final position, Samuel Féret explains the rationale of the new concept of CAP Strategic Plans (CSP) for a future CAP as proposed by the European Commission. This is intended as a pivotal piece of the future new delivery model, probably the biggest proposed change in how the CAP is set to operate in the future. The first in a five part article series on where next for CAP. […]
An important CAP report was suppressed until just after the European elections, which, nevertheless, saw some significant changes in the Parliament’s political groupings. Oliver Moore has more. […]
Behind closed doors the European Commission is negotiating about a massive trade deal with the South American block Mercosur. Talks continue despite increasing concerns for farmers and the environment. Are farming interests and consumer standards being sacrificed for the benefit of the motor industry? Part two of a two-part article with Hans Wetzels. […]
In the fifth part in this series, Louise Kelleher works through the IEEP manifestos of the key European political parliament in the run-up to the elections to see how they meet their sustainability commitments. On the cards today: the EPP aka European People’s Party. […]
Last week saw the launch of the Agriculture Atlas, a collaboration between Heinrich Böll Foundation, Friends of the Earth Europe and BirdLife International on the state of play of EU farming policy. Including a contribution by ARC2020, this is a comprehensive, in-depth and timely resource. […]
Behind closed doors the European Commission is negotiating about a massive trade-deal with the South-American block Mercosur. Talks continue despite increasing concerns for farmers and the environment. Part one of a two parter with Hans Wetzels. […]
In the fourth part in this series, Louise Kelleher works through the IEEP manifestos of the key European political parliament in the run-up to the elections to see how they meet their sustainability commitments. On the cards today: the Party of the European Left. […]
In this third part, Louise Kelleher summarises the IEEP analysis of the manifesto of the European Green Party (EGP). How does it match up to their 2014 manifesto? How do their commitments score against the European Environment Agency’s red indicators and against their own Think 2030 report? […]
IEEP looks at how PES policies have evolved since its 2014 manifesto, and examines how they stack up against the recommendations of its own Think 2030 report. It checks for compliance with red indicators – the targets in the 7th Environmental Action Programme (EAP) considered unlikely to be met by 2020, as flagged in the EEA’s European Environment Agency’s 2018 Environmental Indicator Report. So what is PES promising? […]
The Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) has combed through the manifestoes of the main groups in the European Parliament to weed out the empty promises and scrutinize the proposals. First up in the series is the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). So how did ALDE do on agricultural policy? […]
The Agriculture Committee in the European Parliament voted today by 27 votes to 17 (with one abstention) to agree its position on the CAP strategic plan. This votes represents a significant weakening of the environmental ambition of the CAP reform process, and little progress on fairness in agri and rural supports. However the next Parliament will have the option to reject this and start anew. […]
In part one of this two part series, we outlined the background to the current CAP reform process thus far. Below, Sebastian Lakner unpacks where the different actors are at now, before a significant vote in the Agriculture Committee on the 2nd April (agenda here) (meeting documents here) […]
With insect Armageddon and biodiversity collapse making the headlines, pesticides are public enemy No. 1. Scientists are now naming and shaming pesticides as a key driver of biodiversity loss. Even the European Parliament has caught the bug. MEPs insist that the new CAP must do more to shrug off our dependency on agrochemicals. Meanwhile farmers are showing that – with the right supports – instead of scapegoats for biodiversity loss, they can be part of the solution. […]
Agricultural and Rural Convention