Farm Europe warmly welcomes the approval by the ENVI Committee, today, of the provisional agreement resulting from interinstitutional negotiations on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs). 

The favourable vote in the ENVI Committee sends an important signal of the European Parliament’s commitment to promoting responsible, science-based innovation, in support of the sustainability and competitiveness of EU agricultural enterprises. European farmers and consumers alike need this text to be adopted as swiftly as possible, in order to be equipped with the necessary tools for a more resilient, competitive and sustainable agricultural sector.

Farm Europe believes that the compromise reached during trilogue negotiations represents a crucial step towards providing European agriculture with a clear, balanced and competitive regulatory framework, finally enabling the concrete application of innovations that have become indispensable to address the challenges posed by climate change, increasing pressure from pests and diseases, water resilience, and the progressive reduction in available crop protection products.

The agreement offers a much-needed opportunity for both farmers and consumers. This will support the path towards sustainable intensification, enabling European agriculture to produce more and better, while laying the foundations for a resilient and increasingly carbon-neutral economy in which agriculture is part of the solution.

While the deal is necessarily a compromise, it nevertheless represents a light at the end of the tunnel after years in which European farmers have been constrained by political choices that placed ideology ahead of science, and consumers have been left uncertain about the real nature of their food options. 

Regarding the next steps, the Council is expected to adopt its formal first reading position in the AGRIFISH Council of 30th March allowing a formal adoption by  the EP plenary scheduled for 27th April. 

Eat Europe and Farm Europe warmly welcome the initiative taken during the Agrifish EU Council by several EU Members States, calling on the European Commission to revise Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on food information to consumers (FIC Regulation) and to extend mandatory origin labelling to a broader range of agricultural and food products.

At a time when food sovereignty has become a strategic priority for the European Union, ensuring long-term access for all citizens to safe, healthy, sustainable and high-quality food requires strong support for European agriculture and the agri-food sector. Transparent and reliable origin labelling is a key tool to achieve this objective.

While EU legislation already provides for mandatory origin labelling for certain products—such as fresh meats, eggs, fruits and vegetables, honey, olive oil, fishery products, wine and organic products—these rules remain fragmented and incomplete. They do not cover all raw products, in particular products of animal origin, and the indication of the origin of primary ingredients in processed foods is still not systematic.

“We strongly believe that clearer and more comprehensive origin labelling would significantly strengthen consumer trust, enhance transparency and better valorise products produced in line with high European standards”, commented Yves Madre, President of Farm Europe. It would also empower consumers to make more informed and sustainable purchasing choices, favouring local supply chains and short distribution circuits, while reinforcing the position of European farmers within the food supply chain.

“In a context marked by the multiplication of trade agreements, European consumers are increasingly attentive to the origin of the food they purchase and are demanding higher levels of transparency. Clear Country of origin labelling – instead of a generic and sometimes misleading indication of origin “EU-Non EU” – is also essential to ensure fair competition and to recognise the economic, social and environmental value of EU production standards”, said the President of Eat Europe Luigi Scordamaglia.

Eat Europe and Farm Europe therefore fully support the call by the signatory Member States for a swift revision of the FIC Regulation. This revision should build on the experience gained from the implementation of the rules on the indication of the origin of primary ingredients, which have represented an important step forward but remain imperfect and unevenly applied across the Union. In particular, Eat Europe encourages the Commission to prioritise the indication of the Country of origin, rather than broad references such as “EU” or “non-EU”, which do not fully meet consumers’ expectations for transparency.

Eat Europe and Farm Europe call on the European Commission to seize this momentum and act without delay. Expanding mandatory Country of origin labelling to the widest possible range of food products is essential to meet consumer expectations, support European farmers, promote sustainable food systems and strengthen the EU’s food sovereignty.

Today, the European Parliament has adopted its resolution seeking an opinion from the Court of Justice on the compatibility with the Treaties of the proposed EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement (EMPA) and Interim Trade Agreement (ITA).

MEPs had to face today one of the most important choices of the current term: whether or not to support the Mercosur agreement, under intense pressure from the European Commission and some Member States. Farm Europe and Eat Europe welcome the determination and dedication to democracy of the 334 MEPs who voted in favour of the resolution that should de facto suspend the ratification process of the Mercosur trade agreement. 

The challenges faced today by the EU economy do not rely on a single trade agreement, but on the contrary by the capacity of the European Union and the European Commission in particular to lay down the conditions for a flourishing EU economy including when it comes to agriculture, which is not the case today, without undermining democratic processes that are the strength of the EU, internally and globally. Our values must be respected and valorised instead of considered as an obstacle. 

Concerning agriculture, the agenda today on the table is going the opposite direction of the Draghi’s report. Therefore, we urge the European Commission to fully respect democracy and focus the work in the coming months on stepping up internal policies to revive EU competitiveness and resilience, pushing forward modern and forward looking trade agenda rather than out dated ones that makes agriculture the banker of all trade negotiations at a time where agriculture sovereignty is more important than ever.

It is now up to the European Parliament to decide on the future of the trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur countries, following its adoption by a qualified majority of the permanent representatives of the EU Member States. When making their individual choices, MEPs will have to take into account not only the geopolitical and economic issues highlighted by the European Commission to speed up ratification, but also the serious consequences of this agreement for European agriculture. The latter currently lacks the tools to stand up to competition from Latin American countries. 

The measures taken by the European Commission in recent days do not restore the balance and could not justify any change in position on the agricultural aspects of this agreement, which is detrimental to European farmers:

• Lowering the monitoring threshold for activating the safeguard clause for agricultural products to 5% does not change the situation. This safeguard clause is purely cosmetic. It provides no additional guarantees to those negotiated in the agreement itself. Furthermore, the real, automatic and robust reciprocity clauses initially proposed by the European Parliament have been discarded. Under these conditions, European farmers would indeed face unfair competition, caught between European rules, with a strong impact on their competitiveness, aimed at protecting the environment and EU consumers on the one hand, and imported products that flout these same standards on the other. The finalisation of this agreement would deal a fatal blow to the credibility of the rules put in place within the EU over the last 20 years to regulate agricultural activity. 
• As regards the recent budgetary statement on the CAP of President Ursula von der Leyen, it does not in any way constitute a guarantee for European farmers. Although the European Commission has recognised that at least €400 billion would be needed to preserve the CAP budget, rather than the €300 billion in the protected envelope, the recent letter from Ursula von der Leyen does not provide any guarantees at this stage nor the necessary visibility for European farmers. On the contrary, the President of the European Commission is leaving harmful doubts hanging over possible distortions of competition, not only from third countries, but also within the internal market itself, depending on the choices that Member States may make after 2027 in implementing their national programmes. Moreover, the Commission is confronting national leaders with an unsolvable financial equation, having slashed the CAP by 20%, cohesion by 40% and the European Social Fund by 100% within the proposed single fund. Under these conditions, how can the EU ensure calm arbitration and offer farmers clear prospects after 2027 within a common framework? 

In the coming days, MEPs will therefore face one of the most important choices of the current term: whether or not to support the Mercosur agreement. At this stage, such support would be misunderstood by almost all farmers in the European Union. It would sow the seeds of a major rift between Europe and its agricultural community, one of the most committed to this project, which has, until now, enabled the EU to become an agricultural powerhouse. The EU finds itself at a crossroads, in an extremely fragile position, at a time when world powers are turning agriculture into a major geopolitical weapon of the 21st century. 

The agreement negotiated by the European Commission with Mercosur is outdated in this respect. It follows in the footsteps of all those negotiations in which European agriculture has been the banker, the losing sector, whenever a potential overall benefit for the Union was expected. 

At a time when European sovereignty is a leitmotif repeated ad nauseam by European and national political circles, this sovereignty depends first and foremost on our ability to increase our agricultural production in order to meet our food security needs, our ability to supply our importing partners, and our assurance that we can build an autonomous foundation for our emerging bioeconomy. the sincerity of its use by some remains to be seen, unless it is a symptom of a Europe without an economic compass, negotiating agreements, measures and countermeasures according to particular interests, without a strategy to place Europe and Europeans at the forefront of Community action.