European agriculture and fisheries ministers will be meeting in Brussels on Monday 9 and Tuesday 10 December, chaired by István Nagy, to negotiate the volumes of total allowable catches (TACs) and quotas for 2025(Agence Europe will continue to follow this story) and to debate, once again, the post-2027 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
The representatives of the new Commission will be out in force: Costas Kadis (Fisheries and Oceans), Christophe Hansen (Agriculture and Food), Jessika Roswall (Environment) and Olivér Várhelyi (Animal Health and Welfare).
With regard to the CAP, at the Agriculture Council in October, ministers adopted the conclusions of the Hungarian Presidency, supported by 26 Member States, on the future of this policy (see EUROPE 13510/30).
The Hungarian Presidency would like a new debate to be held in December to inform new agriculture ministers and the new Commissioner for Agriculture about the key issues for the future of the CAP. There are also rumours that Romania, which refused to support the conclusions in October, may change its mind and allow the EU Council (rather than the Hungarian Presidency) to adopt the conclusions, which would give greater political weight to the text (https://aeur.eu/f/en8 ).
The idea is also to give guidance to the new Commission, which plans to present its vision for agriculture and food in late February 2025 (according to an indicative timetable), as well as proposals for revising the Common Market Organisation (CMO) regulation to strengthen the role of farmers in the food supply chain.
Bioeconomy. Ministers will hold a policy debate on how to further develop the bioeconomy. The bioeconomy refers to the use of renewable biological resources from land and sea, such as crops, forest products, fish, animals, micro-organisms and biomass, to produce food, materials and energy. The bioeconomy already plays a key role in the EU economy, contributing around 5% of total EU GDP and employing 8.2% of the workforce. The Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council has published an information note (https://aeur.eu/f/en4 ) containing two questions to guide the ministerial debate.
Forests. The Hungarian Presidency of the Council will present a progress report (https://aeur.eu/f/en3 ) detailing the work carried out to date on a technical level on the proposal to set up a forest monitoring framework.
In addition, the Hungarian Presidency of the Council will provide an overview of the progress made on a technical level on the proposals relating to plant reproductive material (https://aeur.eu/f/en5 ) and forestry reproductive material (https://aeur.eu/f/en6 ).
Animal welfare. The Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council will present a document (https://aeur.eu/f/en2 ) taking stock of negotiations on revised animal welfare legislation.
Numerous ‘any other business’ items. The Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council will report on the progress of negotiations on the sensitive proposal on new genomic techniques, following two meetings of the Council working party organised on this issue in July and November 2024.
In addition, the Council will receive information from the Hungarian Presidency on the work carried out in the veterinary field during these six months and on the conference on the future of the European beekeeping sector.
The delegations also plan to speak on the following subjects: - annual performance clearance under the CAP (Spanish and Latvian delegations – https://aeur.eu/f/enb ); - introduction of a charitable operator in the food sector within the framework of European food legislation (German delegation); - biotechnologies (Spanish and Danish delegations) ; - agreement on a ‘Green Denmark’ (tax model on greenhouse gases for agricultural production - Danish delegation); - animal welfare (Swedish delegation); - biological control (German and Danish delegations); - African swine fever and bluetongue disease (Italian and German delegations); - nutrient recycling and biogas production at farm level (Finnish delegation); - plant protection products and the use of drones (Portuguese delegation); - rural development fund (Romanian delegation). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)