The European Union should create strategic agricultural reserves as a matter of urgency in order to strengthen food security and strategic autonomy, the Eat Europe organisation declared on Tuesday 3 March.
At the Global Food Forum organised by Farm Europe, Eat Europe warned that repeated crises have revealed the EU’s structural vulnerabilities (see EUROPE 13820/7).
Luigi Scordamaglia, President of Eat Europe, stressed that while “strengthening Europe’s productive capacity remains essential, but production alone is not enough to protect Europe against external shocks”.
Eat Europe is therefore advocating the establishment of European reserves of key agricultural products and critical inputs such as fertilisers and animal feed.
These reserves could help stabilise markets by absorbing surpluses and distributing stocks in times of shortage.
Éric Sargiacomo MEP (S&D, French) told Agence Europe on Wednesday 4 March that these ideas are widely shared within the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee (see EUROPE 13701/16). “We need better market regulation to avoid extreme prices. It’s not nostalgia, it’s pragmatism”, he believes.
The European Commission has put the issue of strategic stocks on the table, “which is a good thing, but we need to go further, particularly by including fertilisers”, he added. Éric Sargiacomo also advocates mobilising the new European Competitiveness Fund (2028-2034) to “invest in strategic storage capacity: I propose that €20 billion be devoted to this”. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)