The European Parliament urged the European Commission on Thursday 16 February to secure fertiliser supplies, take action to bring down prices and increase the EU’s strategic autonomy.
Parliament adopted a resolution calling on the Commission to take more action on the availability of fertilisers. All amendments tabled were rejected in plenary (see EUROPE 13121/18). Only one initial paragraph has been partly deleted, on the use of the revenues of the new EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) for the agricultural sector.
Budget and crisis reserve. Among the short-term measures, Parliament calls on Member States and the Commission to “consider using the agricultural reserve for the year 2023 to provide immediate assistance to farmers in the face of exponentially rising fertiliser costs and the resulting increase in production costs”.
During the debate, Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski was again open to the idea of using the reserve to help farmers in EU countries bordering Ukraine cope with the effects of increased imports of agricultural products from that country under attack from Russia.
Furthermore, Parliament calls for guaranteed support for farmers until the market stabilises and alternatives to mineral fertilisers are available.
Parliament is concerned that support for farmers and fertiliser producers through the Temporary Crisis Framework for State Aid could lead to renationalisation, fragmentation and competition between different markets and among farmers. MEPs point out that the mid-term review of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) could provide an opportunity to “strengthen the CAP budget and take account of the serious impact of inflation on input costs and farm incomes”.
Another parliamentary request: to extend the temporary suspension of import duties for all mineral fertilisers, except those of Russian or Belarusian origin, “in order to increase the availability of fertilisers for farmers and thus have a stabilising effect on prices and to make the European market more dynamic by improving logistics and reducing the administrative burden”.
Parliament also stresses that the EU should not replace one dependency with another, this time with imported fertilisers, nor should it jeopardise the development of a low-carbon European fertiliser industry, which would lead to a significant increase in global CO2 emissions and undermine the Paris climate goals.
MEPs also call on the Commission to consider a mechanism for joint purchasing of fertilisers at EU level and to reduce bottlenecks in the fertiliser market. In the long term, MEPs recommend speeding up the decarbonisation process and using non-fossil and recycled nutrients to produce fertiliser. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)