As we predicted, the European Parliament’s agriculture committee, meeting in Brussels on Tuesday 30 May, decided to object to the delegated act containing measures to simply certain rules on the greening of aid (see EUROPE 11791). The act includes a ban on the use of plant protection products on productive ecological focus areas (see EUROPE 11749 and 11780).
The recitals of the resolution, which has still to be put to a vote in plenary session of the Parliament in June, were voted on by the agriculture committee. Those of Albert Dess (EPP, Germany) were adopted unlike those of John Stuart Agnew (EFDD, UK), which were all rejected.
The committee’s view is that, in tabling this delegated act, the Commission is severely undermining the prerogatives of Parliament as co-legislator on both procedure and content. MEPs believe that, with this delegated act, the Commission is going well beyond a pure simplification measure and that the text will have a fundamental impact on the implementation of the common agricultural policy (CAP). They say that the (proposed) ban on phytosanitary protection of leguminous crops on ecological focus areas “threatens a sustainable domestic protein production in line with the EU protein strategy, when Europe already heavily depends on imports of protein”. The ecological benefits of leguminous plants with regard to soil protection and nitrogen fixation are “indisputable”, MEPs state. If Parliament were to adhere to the line of its agriculture committee, the delegated regulation could not come into force. It may be remembered that the Council preferred not to raise an objection to the delegated act.
The resolution objecting to the text will be discussed and voted on during the Parliamentary plenary session in Strasbourg, 12-15 June. The deadline for objections to the delegated regulation is 15 June.
Following the committee vote, Dess said it was important “to rectify the disdain that the Commission has shown towards the European Parliament”. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)