Germany and Austria announced in a document published on Thursday 17 February the launch of a new ‘alliance for food security’ to identify measures to support the income of EU farmers.
For these two countries, supported by a group of 12 countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Spain), a combination of several factors, including rising production costs and unfair competition from certain third countries, “substantially threatens the economic existence of European farmers and productive agriculture as a whole”.
In response to this threat, they call for the proper implementation of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. They also suggest that Member States take advantage of the new Article 210a of the Common Market Organisation (CMO) Regulation, which allows stakeholders to work together to implement sustainability initiatives combining the environmental and economic dimensions.
Finally, these countries are asking the Commission to propose mandatory EU-wide origin labelling, a priority of Austrian Minister Elisabeth Köstinger.
The German-Austrian position will be discussed at the Agriculture Council on 21 February (see EUROPE 12893/20). Link to the document: https://aeur.eu/f/e9 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)