In a context of increasingly structural geopolitical tensions—from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to conflicts in the Middle East—the European Union is called upon to strengthen its trade defense instruments to protect strategic productive sectors. In this framework, safeguard measures represent essential tools to ensure fairness and sustainability in global trade.

Eat Europe and Farm Europe welcome and support the initiative proposed in Council by Italy and supported by several EU Countries – aimed at making the activation of safeguard clauses more effective within the revision of the GSP Regulation. In view of the plenary vote on the trilogue agreement at the end of 2025, it is important that EU agriculture ministers raise the alarm. As we have already pointed out, despite the positive element of automaticity—crucial to ensuring timely responses to market disruptions—without an adjustment of activation thresholds, such mechanisms risk failing to deliver the desired effects.

For this reason, as Eat Europe and Farm Europe we have actively worked – together with farmers representatives of other producing Countries, starting from Spain – on proposing a reduction of the activation threshold to 20%, in order to make the clause more aligned with market realities and more effective in protecting European producers.

At the same time, the current economic situation shows that rice is not the only sector in need of stronger protection tools. Several European agricultural sectors are currently facing increasing difficulties.

From this perspective, a proposal has also been put forward to extend the application of automatic safeguard clauses to other sensitive products. Among these, the sugar sector represents a clear example: it is going through a particularly critical phase due to the practice of inward processing, compounded by the opening of new zero-duty quotas from third countries, including those in the Mercosur area and Australia.

This example clearly demonstrates how agricultural, trade, energy, and industrial policies are now deeply interconnected. For this reason, it is increasingly necessary to adopt a cross-cutting approach to European policies. We support the action of the Italian government aimed at identifying other agricultural and agri-industrial products that, if not adequately monitored, could destabilize European production and sectors. This is not about protecting a single product, but about changing the working method: anticipating risks, understanding policy interactions, and coherently protecting the Union’s strategic interests.

It is now essential that the request put forward at the AGRIFISH Council be heard not only by agriculture ministers, but also by all EU ministers involved in shaping and implementing European trade agreements. Decisions on international trade have direct effects on the economic sustainability of agricultural supply chains and on the resilience of the European production system. The negotiations on the revision of the GSP Regulation are already at an advanced stage, and the ball now passes to the European Parliament, which has a real opportunity to introduce amendments and correct the imbalances that still exist and that we have repeatedly highlighted before the final adoption of the text.

Europe must not close itself off, but it must stop being naïve. Producing to increase self-sufficiency is not isolationism; it is resilience. It means recognizing that the European agricultural system is a shared security asset. Trade is essential, but it must serve to complement European production, not replace it with raw materials produced in contexts that do not respect our social and environmental model.

If we lose the capacity to produce in Europe, we also lose our political freedom. In the current geopolitical context—unstable and constantly evolving—European food sovereignty can no longer be called into question.

As the international crisis in the Middle East continues to produce concrete and growing effects on agricultural markets, input costs, and food prices, Eat Europe and Farm Europe observe that the European Union still appears trapped in a phase of analysis and discussion that risks being not only insufficient, but harmful.

“At a time when agricultural businesses and the entire agri-food supply chain are facing rising costs and increasing uncertainty, continuing to postpone operational decisions means worsening the situation,” commented Luigi Scordamaglia, President of Eat Europe, after the latest meetings of European food crisis response mechanisms that seem to be yielding little progress. “This is no longer the time for assessments. The crisis is already here.”

Even the highest European economic authorities are pointing to the seriousness of the moment: the effects of the current shock are set to unfold progressively but deeply, with damage already accumulated that cannot be recovered in the short term. Ignoring or underestimating these signals would be a strategic mistake.

“The European Union must change its approach: not merely observe and analyse, but act with speed, vision, and appropriate tools. Immediate and structural measures are needed,” said Yves Madre, President of Farm Europe. “It is essential to activate contingency measures right away to support agricultural and agri-food businesses affected by rising costs and market tensions, and immediately act on fertilizers’ prices through excluding them from the application of the ETS, and by consequence from CBAM and define a dedicated decarbonization strategy for farmers and the fertilizer industry, focused on demand, through real incentives rather than on the artificial creation of supply without a market.”

But this alone is not enough.

At the same time, a more resilient European system must be built — one capable of preventing and managing crises without amplifying their effects. In this direction, it is urgent to launch concrete actions on strategic food storage to strengthen European food security, as already proposed by Eat Europe and Farm Europe.

This requires both allocating a dedicated budget of at least €20 billion within the competitiveness fund for investments in stockpiling and logistics in the agri-food sector, and defining a new stock management framework within the CMO (Common Market Organisation), as part of the package for a modern future CAP, ensuring it is effective and truly geared toward crisis management.

“No more delays: inertia has a cost. Continuing to postpone operational decisions while waiting for further data or analysis means leaving businesses and citizens exposed to a rapidly evolving crisis. Institutional inertia risks turning a manageable crisis into a structural one,” concluded Luigi Scordamaglia.

Europe has the tools, resources, and expertise to act. What is missing today is timeliness. It is time to move from words to action.

Farm Europe warmly welcome today’s adoption by the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) of the report by MEP Carlo Fidanza on “how to secure a sustainable future for the EU livestock sector in light of the need to ensure food security, farmers’ resilience and the challenges posed by animal diseases?”.

This vote represents a significant step forward in promoting a resilient, competitive, sustainable and diverse EU livestock sector. 

Farm Europe particularly stresses the report’s call to bring back production as a core policy orientation, taking into account the diversity of our models and the ambition to keep production all across the EU. The focus on performance by fully optimising the positive benefits of livestock farming and on investments to prepare for the future should also be a core political orientation to be reflected in the up-coming EU livestock strategy. . 

The EU must remove economic and regulatory barriers to revive investment in livestock farming through a comprehensive plan that enables large-scale modernization of the sector, implements a genuine decarbonization strategy, promotes genetic improvement, and encourages quality initiatives that meet consumer expectations. 

The decline in production and decapitalization is not irreversible; rather, these trends must be reversed. The sector should be recognised for its role in providing healthy, balanced nutrition and for its environmental contributions, including pasture management, while being supported in reducing emissions through targeted investments in genetics, nutrition, infrastructure, and the use of effluents for biogas and biofertilizer production.

We now urge the European Parliament to confirm this positive signal in plenary. A strong endorsement will lay essential groundwork for the upcoming Livestock Strategy announced by the European Commission for June 2026.

Farm Europe welcomes the adoption of the Council Conclusions on the European Commission’s Strategic Framework for a Competitive and Sustainable EU Bioeconomy. This constitutes an important step forward in strengthening and scaling Europe’s bioeconomy, unlocking innovation, investment and sustainable European production of biomass.

The conclusions rightly place stronger emphasis on the efficient use of biomass, recognising the integrated nature of bioeconomy value chains and their industrial processes, as it is the case for biorefineries, that simultaneously produce multiple outputs. This approach better reflects the reality of modern bio-based industries, than the cascading principle, and allows for optimisation of biomass use across materials, chemicals, food, feed and energy products. 

The text also includes a renewed ambition to develop a sustainable European production of biomass, acknowledging that a resilient and competitive bioeconomy requires a robust domestic supply base. Therefore, safeguarding EU agriculture’s capacity to produce sustainable biomass is crucial both for climate objectives and for reducing dependency on fossil-based resources. This is why the conclusions rightfully highlight the strategic role of the agri-food sector within the bioeconomy and the importance of enabling farmers to participate in higher value-added value chains. 

Another key element is the clear recognition of biorefineries among the core bio-based solutions for scaling innovation and industrial deployment. In this way, the Council acknowledges the importance of industrial platforms capable of transforming biomass into a wide range of high-value products, thus maximising value creation in Europe. However, scaling-up can only be achieved through significant investments and market measures to stimulate demand for bio-based products, both of which are cited as priorities by EU ministers.

Finally, the conclusions rightly recognise the role of sustainable bioenergy in the EU energy mix. While this recognition is welcome, Farm Europe considers that the current cap on crop-based biofuels should be reconsidered in future policy revisions in order to fully harness the contribution of sustainable agricultural feedstocks to the energy transition.

In sum, Farm Europe believes that these conclusions provide a constructive basis for the forthcoming initiatives of the EU Bioeconomy Strategy, where farmers and biorefiners should be put at the centre of the scene. This step forward should pave the way for concrete regulatory developments via concrete market opportunities for the multiple streams of bioeconomy products.

Farm Europe and EAT Europe welcome the provisional agreement reached by the negotiators of the European Parliament, led by the rapporteur Celine Imart, and the Cyprus presidency related to the revision of the Common Market Organisation (CMO) regulation.

While the agreement will need to be assessed in the details, the decision to protect key denominations as steak, to pave the way for further protection as well as to exclude cellular or lab grown products from the usage of meat related denominations is a major step forward to protect both producers and consumers. Farm Europe and Eat Europe also welcome the extension of mandatory contractual relations which will provide visibility and enhance farmers’ negotiating power. 

We congratulate MEP Céline Imart and her colleagues for their commitment as well as the persons involved in the European commission, Commissioner Hansen in particular, and Member States who brought their weight to reach this much needed agreement. 

Transparency means calling food by its correct name. Naming is not a marketing gimmick—it directly affects citizens’ health and wellbeing. Consumers must be accurately informed, especially regarding the nutritional value and level of processing of the products they purchase. We particularly support the explicit recognition of the need for EU-wide harmonisation of terminology related to meat products—bringing the rules closer to the standards already in place for the dairy sector.

This is an important step forward, in line with the joint appeal by Farm Europe and EAT Europe to Commissioners Várhelyi and Hansen, giving voice to the “Words Matter” campaign launched in October 2024. Our campaign underlines the need to ensure consumers can clearly distinguish between animal-based products and their imitations — many of which are highly processed and have different nutritional profiles — thus avoiding misleading marketing and market confusion. This is why we will continue defending the need to keep open the possibility of adding other key meat denominations in the list agreed yesterday.

Farm Europe and Eat Europe also welcome that the deal — in line with what the European Parliament asked —  constitutes an important step to improve the functioning of the EU food chain and overcome the chronic weakness of the agricultural link, clarifying contractual relations — including written contracts as a general rules, despite exceptions and opt-out that still need to be analysed, and enhancing farmers’ capacity to get organised by consolidating offer. 

Today, Farm Europe will open the 9th edition of the Global Food Forum, bringing together nearly 200 farmers and their partners across the value chain, in the presence of Ms Annie Genevard, Mr Francesco Lollobrigida, and Mr Stefan Krajewski—respectively the French, Italian, and Polish Ministers of Agriculture—before welcoming Members of the European Parliament: Mr Carlo Fidanza, Ms Cristina Maestre, Ms Carmen Crespo, Mr Stefano Bonaccini, Mr Benoît Cassart, Mr Herbert Dorfmann, and Mr Dario Nardella. The Forum will also welcome Mr Christophe Hansen, Commissioner for Agriculture, on March 3.

Farm Europe will launch a call to EU decision-makers: agriculture lies at the heart of the European Union’s strategic autonomy, investing in its future cannot be optional. This will be an opportunity for participants to work together on shaping a European investment strategy to prepare the future of EU agriculture.

Securing income support is essential—but not sufficient. The EU must therefore ensure that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its budget are dedicated to a truly common agricultural sovereignty, not to 27 national agricultural strategies that would compete against each other in the internal market and undermine the Union’s ability to exert influence globally. The CAP must remain a strong policy, not be reduced to an ineffective patchwork of programmes.

Beyond the ring-fenced budget proposed by the European Commission (€300 billion), the missing €120 billion must be found and secured—both within the CAP and beyond—in order to prepare the future of EU agriculture.

Therefore, while allowing Member States to adapt the CAP toolbox to local conditions, EU leaders should agree on a limited but strategic number of priorities at European Union level, to collectively address the challenges facing all EU farmers, build the agriculture of tomorrow—ready to meet the challenges of:

• strategic confrontation, through resilient food systems capable of coping with geopolitical, climate, and economic crises;
• adaptation of agricultural systems, through investment to secure access to water, optimize production routes through digital technologies, mobilize the potential of genetic innovation, invest in livestock infrastructure, and strengthen risk-management tools;
• agricultural growth, to meet the challenges of decarbonisation and the strategic autonomy of bioeconomy sectors developing new markets. Circular and biogenic agricultural carbon is one of the strategic molecules needed to enable carbon-neutral transport, chemicals, plastics, and other bioproducts.

Unprecedented support for agricultural investment—on farms and at local level—is the foundation for meeting these challenges. It will enable higher productivity and, in turn, strengthen resilience, the EU’s geopolitical role and presence on global markets, adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, and sustainable growth in production. This should go hand in hand with an autonomous performance framework for the CAP, ensuring a clear common approach while taking into account the specificities of the EU agricultural sector.

BACKGROUND

Water
Agriculture faces the challenge of adapting to climate change. All EU territories are now confronted with climate shocks—water scarcity or excess, shifting seasons, and an increase in extreme events—which have become the norm. This new reality requires farmers to be more flexible and responsive, to implement systemic changes, and to make major investments to anticipate and manage new cycles. A comprehensive adaptation strategy at European Union level should be launched, mobilising investment measures within and beyond the CAP.

Digitalisation
The digital revolution is reshaping every level of action in agriculture and within the CAP. It is an opportunity to lay the foundations for an agriculture that is doubly performant—economically and environmentally—regardless of farm size. It is also an opportunity to build a CAP grounded in a robust framework of performance indicators. To ensure all farmers have equal access and opportunities, the EU should launch an investment plan for digital agricultural infrastructure across all territories and ensure the interoperability of tools, in order to foster innovation and unlock the full potential of digital technologies.

Fertilisers and the agricultural decarbonisation strategy
Fertilisers are a key point of contact between the Green Deal and agriculture through their inclusion in the ETS, which in practice brings arable production into the mechanism. While the European Commission has integrated downstream products into the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to prevent carbon leakage, it is unable to do so for arable crops. Arable producers are placed in an untenable situation—facing a loss of competitiveness without a mechanism to finance the agricultural transition. The European Union must therefore revisit its decarbonisation strategy for fertilisers. Rather than discouraging fertiliser production in the EU, the European Commission should support the emergence of a viable economic model for farmers using low-carbon fertilisers, enabling them to generate carbon credits from reduced agricultural emissions and sell them on regulated markets, without bringing agriculture into the ETS. The EU can incentivise the valorisation of carbon-farming credits, preserving food sovereignty while accelerating decarbonisation and improving access to high-quality carbon credits for ETS-regulated companies.

Livestock
The livestock sector is facing an unprecedented erosion of production, alongside rising imports. It sits at the heart of a societal paradox: calls for emissions reductions, while simultaneously blocking the construction of new, more efficient infrastructure. The EU must therefore remove the economic and regulatory barriers that are holding back investment, through a plan enabling large-scale modernisation of the sector, the deployment of a genuine decarbonisation strategy, genetic improvement and promotion, and support for quality initiatives that meet consumer expectations. The decline in production and decapitalisation are not inevitable; the trend must be reversed. The sector should be recognised for its contribution to healthy, balanced nutrition and for its environmental benefits in pasture management, and supported in reducing emissions through investments in genetics, nutrition, buildings, and the use of effluents for biogas and biofertiliser production.

Bioeconomy
Agriculture and its value chains are a key lever for decarbonisation and for achieving the ambition of a carbon-neutral economy, thanks to their ability to underpin neutral biogenic carbon cycles through photosynthesis. Overall, EU agricultural production must increase by 25% to meet this challenge. To enable the emergence of bioeconomy sectors, the European Union should build on existing value chains to strengthen investment capacity and promote synergies across food and feed, bioenergy, biochemistry, bioplastics, and biomaterials. This should be supported through clear mandates similar to those established for biofuels—mandates that should be increased to at least 10%—thereby accelerating the deployment of other bio-based products.

Risk & crisis management
European solidarity is the most effective way to manage agricultural risks and crises—and it is five times less costly than each country acting alone. If Member States acted individually, it would take no less than €10 billion to cover a risk that requires only €2 billion at European level. The crisis reserve reinforced by the European Commission is therefore a step in the right direction. It should be complemented by clearer trigger mechanisms—tailored to different types of risks—and by a clear allocation of responsibilities between the farm, the Member State, and the European Union, in order to build a predictable and effective system that safeguards investment and ensures continuity of production.