The European Commission is increasingly called upon to present a food safety plan in the EU, due to the effects of the war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine, which is destabilising several sectors (cereals, livestock, fertilisers, etc.).
The Commission is expected to adopt market measures shortly, and on 23 March a communication on food safety (see EUROPE 12905/4).
The EPP group in the European Parliament has asked the Commission to “submit such a food safety plan to the European Parliament as soon as possible"”, said Herbert Dorfmann (EPP, Italian).
EPP President Manfred Weber of Germany said on Tuesday that the EU is losing two major producers of agricultural products, which has an impact on food supply. “We ask the Commission to come up with a food safety plan”, Weber said.
G7 Agriculture Ministers’ meeting. Germany announced on Tuesday that it would host a virtual meeting of G7 agriculture ministers on Friday 11 March to discuss the impact of the Russian invasion on global food security and ways to stabilise food markets.
“We are closely monitoring the impact on agricultural markets. Global prices for agricultural raw materials and fertilisers are expected to rise, not least because of the sharp increase in energy costs. We are following the market situation around the world very closely”, said German Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir.
The ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy is divisive. According to Dorfmann, the Commission should “avoid presenting further legislative proposals that have negative impacts on European food security”.
The EU’s agricultural cooperatives and organisations (Copa-Cogeca) have called for “a paradigm shift, starting with the objectives of the ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy”.
MEP Benoît Biteau (Greens/EFA, France), on the other hand, believes that this is “surely not the time to question the objectives of the ‘European Green Deal’ and the strategies that flow from it”. “If the targets had been put forward through the ‘Green Deal’, we would not be in this situation where many people are dependent on the production of one place on the planet” (soya, wheat). “On the contrary, we need to speed up the process”, said Biteau.
On Tuesday, French Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie called on the EU to produce more to avoid a global food crisis due to the halt in some Russian and Ukrainian grain exports.
“The livestock sector will be deeply affected, knowing that these are sectors that are already weakened. I am thinking of the pig and poultry sectors. We will provide specific support for these farmers In the resilience plan”, he said.
Warning from Frans Timmermans. The European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for the ‘European Green Deal’, Frans Timmermans, has issued a warning to those who want to review the strategies of the ‘European Green Deal’. Speaking to the Environment Committee of the European Parliament on Monday 7 March, Frans Timmermans said: “Please don’t believe in the illusion that you would help food production by making it less sustainable. By not opting for ‘Farm to Fork’ strategies, by not making it more resilient in terms of the natural environment and the food production.”
The Vice-President called for a reduction in “our dependency on potash coming from elsewhere, including Russia and Belarus” and “a reduction in the amount of fertilisers and pesticides we need”. So the ‘Farm to fork’ strategy is “ part of the answer, not part of the problem”, according to him. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur with Damien Genicot)