MEPs acknowledge that farmers are continually called upon to face the challenges of climate change (droughts, floods, soil degradation, etc.), but they were divided during a debate on Wednesday 10 May in Strasbourg on what remedies to use to overcome the challenges of the ‘green transition’.
The EPP group’s wish to scrap the text on the sustainable use of pesticides and the Nature Restoration Law was strongly criticised by MEPs from the S&D, The Left and Greens/EFA groups (see EUROPE 13176/7).
The Renew Europe group believes that agricultural and environmental issues should not be set against each other. “My group has the right positioning”, the group’s president, Frenchman Stéphane Séjourné, told the press on Tuesday 9 May.
“The political guidance provided by the EU Council aims to ensure that the sensitive and particular circumstances of the agricultural sector are duly taken into account in the forthcoming discussions”, noted the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU, represented by Jessika Roswall. The Swedish Presidency will organise a conference in Sweden focusing on how the CAP can contribute to achieving high environmental and climate ambitions, “while ensuring increased production and resilient agriculture”.
Helping farmers. Mairead McGuinness, European Commissioner for Financial Services, stated that this green transition cannot happen without farmers.
However, to ensure food security, “we need a resilient agri-food system”, and therefore a green transition. “Meeting the challenges of sustainability will enable us to guarantee food security not only for tomorrow, but also for the long term. And I think we all know that time is of the essence”, the Commissioner insisted.
She acknowledged the difficulties involved in some of the proposals in the ‘European Green Deal’, and suggested looking at all the proposals and seeing how they work together, “rather than looking at them separately”.
“We want to start in-depth discussions with you to develop the best possible legislative measures to ensure the productivity of EU agriculture now and in the future”, the Commission representative assured. Without the adoption of legislation (nature restoration and sustainable use of pesticides), “farmers’ livelihoods and indeed food security will be put at risk, that’s what the science tells us”, Mairead McGuinness stressed.
Climate change denial. According to Iratxe García Pérez (S&D, Spanish), “the science leaves less and less room for the climate change denial of the right and the far right”. She wondered what the future of agriculture will be if denialist policies turn ecosystems into deserts. She considered it dangerous to seek the rejection of two major Commission objectives (the reduction of pesticide use and the reconstruction of one fifth of destroyed habitats in the EU by 2030). She concluded that the preservation of land and agricultural activity cannot be held hostage to electoral calculations.
Martin Häusling (Greens/EFA, German) criticised the EPP’s “schemes” and reproached it for not talking about biodiversity loss or food waste. “We support the Commission, we need an agricultural revolution now”, Häusling said.
Pascal Canfin (Renew Europe, French) criticised the conservative side’s “offensive” against the ‘Green Deal’.
Decrease in agricultural production. Herbert Dorfmann (EPP, Italian) said his group could not support the proposals on pesticide reduction and nature restoration because of the approach taken by the Commission. Farmers should not be denigrated, he noted.
The ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy would lead to a 15% decrease in agricultural production if applied, said Frenchman Gilles Lebreton on behalf of the ID group.
Italian Nicola Procaccini, on behalf of the ECR group, stressed the need not to jeopardise farmers’ strength “in the name of false environmentalist ideologies”, such as the replacement of animal flesh with artificial meat produced in laboratories or the commercialisation of worm meal, “which the Commission has entrusted to a Vietnamese multinational in a monopoly situation”. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)