Farm Europe warmly welcomes today’s adoption by the European Parliament 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, considering as well livestock contribution to the environment and rural economy. 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 upcoming EU livestock strategy. . 

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 also being supported in reducing emissions through targeted investments in genetics, nutrition, infrastructure, and the use of effluents for biogas and biofertilizer production.

This strong endorsement from the European Parliament establishes a solid foundation for the Livestock Strategy that the European Commission is set to unveil on 7th July 2026.

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 European Parliament today adopted its position on the proposals for the European budget for the 2028–2034 period.

Starting from the observation that food security is a vital component of the European Union’s strategic autonomy, that the agricultural sector is particularly vulnerable to economic shocks, and that the transition of the European economy towards a carbon-neutral economy cannot be achieved without more agriculture, the European Parliament demonstrates political responsibility by opposing the treatment of agriculture as envisaged by the European Commission in its proposal presented in July 2025.

It calls for genuine political coherence between the imperative of European sovereignty—whether in food, energy or bioeconomy terms—which requires a stronger European agriculture—and the challenges of increasing productivity, rising production costs, improving the living standards of European farmers, ensuring quality and affordable food for all Europeans, maintaining the vitality of rural areas, enabling generational renewal, and managing crises whether climatic, economic or geopolitical.

In this context, Farm Europe welcomes the European Parliament’s call for a strong, autonomous CAP with a budget maintained in real economic terms, amounting to €433 billion dedicated to European agriculture for the 2028–2034 period. Only a properly funded European agricultural policy, truly common in nature and prioritising the sustainable increase of European agricultural production, will enable Europe to remain a leading global power, sovereign and in control of its future.

Farm Europe congratulates the rapporteurs of the European Parliament, notably MEP Siegfried Mureșan, as well as the committee rapporteurs, in particular MEP Stefano Bonaccini for the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI), for their serious and responsible work in the interest of Europe and Europeans.

Eat Europe and Farm Europe are calling on Members of the European Parliament to support crucial amendments to the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) revision ahead of the 28 April plenary vote, warning that the proposed safeguard mechanism for the EU rice sector risks being ineffective in its current form.

While the reform introduces an important automatic safeguard clause intended to anticipate and manage market crises, in a letter sent to all Members of the European Parliament both organisations caution that excessively high activation thresholds could severely limit its usefulness and leave European rice producers exposed to avoidable market shocks.

At the centre of concern is the proposed 45% increase threshold required to trigger the safeguard mechanism. As already highlighted at the outcome of the trilogue negotiations, Eat Europe and Farm Europe argue that this level is disconnected from market realities and would prevent timely intervention in situations where early action is essential to avoid structural damage to the sector.

“An automatic safeguard mechanism must be operational, not theoretical,” the organisations state. “If the thresholds are set too high, the instrument will fail precisely when it is needed most.”

The organisations are urging lawmakers to support a reduction of the trigger threshold to 20%, describing it as a targeted, proportionate and technically feasible adjustment. They stress that such a modification would not reopen or undermine the broader trilogue agreement, but rather ensure its practical effectiveness.

They also highlight unresolved technical concerns linked to the calculation methodology, including the use of a moving average reference system, which remains insufficiently responsive to rapid market fluctuations.

According to Eat Europe and Farm Europe, improving the safeguard mechanism for rice would also establish an important precedent for other vulnerable EU agricultural sectors, such as sugar and ethanol, which face similar exposure to global market volatility.

“This is not about reopening negotiations,” the statement continues. “It is about ensuring that a crisis-prevention tool works in practice and delivers real protection for European producers.”

The organisations are therefore calling on Members of the European Parliament to support the proposed amendments, stressing that failure to act could leave the EU rice sector exposed to severe and potentially irreversible economic damage.

Today, the European Commission published its AccelerateEU Energy Union Communication, setting out an action plan to tackle the energy price crisis triggered notably by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as a consequence of the ongoing conflict in Iran. Farm Europe welcomes several key elements of this Communication that have a direct impact on European farmers, bioenergy and biofuel producers, and the fertiliser industry, while calling on the Commission to translate these commitments into concrete and long-term policy action.

Farm Europe particularly values the European Commission’s commitment to map existing EU refining capacities and work on measures to increase domestic production of sustainable biofuels by May 2026. At a time when fuel price spikes are hitting farmers and agri-food supply chains hard, boosting homegrown sustainable biofuel production is both a short-term relief measure and a long-term strategic investment. European biomass production can and must be a key part of the solution to reducing our dependence on imported fossil fuels, and this recognition by the Commission is an important signal.

In this sense, the Communication’s acknowledgement that biogas and biomethane have a crucial strategic role to play in replacing imported fossil fuels, particularly in sectors where electrification remains difficult is strongly welcomed. The recognition that on-farm and cooperative biomethane projects can reduce fossil fuel dependency while generating additional income for farmers and creating local rural value underlines the win-win situation that is created by bioenergy value-chains, from farmers to biorefiners.

However, good intentions must not remain empty promises. For the sector to develop at the scale and pace required, the EU must deliver three things: a stable and supportive regulatory framework that removes red tape and the undue restrictions on the use of crop-based biofuels; a long-term investment landscape that gives farmers and industry the certainty to commit; and guaranteed stable long-term demand for bioenergy.

Farm Europe also highlights the executive’s pledge to map alternatives to fossil-based feedstocks for fertilisers and to promote circular bio-based solutions. The coupling of biomethane production with recycled nutrient recovery is a prime example of how agriculture can simultaneously contribute to energy security and reduce dangerous dependencies on imported fertilisers.

Overall, this Communication constitutes a genuine and encouraging step forward, reflecting a meaningful shift in the Commission’s approach to the role of biofuels and bioenergy in the EU’s energy transition. For too long, these sectors have been undervalued in EU energy policy. Today’s Communication begins to correct that. Yet this should be a starting point and not the destination. 

Farm Europe and Eat Europe warmly welcome the adoption by the Council, today, of its position at first reading on the New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), paving the way for its final adoption by the Parliament.

“NGTs are very much needed and farmers are ready to exploit their full potential, we cannot afford further delays or setbacks with incalculable consequences in terms of both environmental and economic sustainability and the competitiveness of European farmers in the global market” commented Farm Europe.

The adoption by the Council of its formal position sends an important signal to European farmers and consumers. It now places a clear responsibility on the European Parliament to move forward swiftly. Without securing a rapid adoption, farmers will remain deprived of the necessary tools to strengthen the resilience, competitiveness and sustainability of the agricultural sector.

Farm Europe and Eat Europe believe that the compromise reached during trilogue negotiations represents a crucial step towards providing European agriculture with a clear, balanced and competitive regulatory framework. Its timely adoption is essential to finally enable the concrete deployment 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.

This agreement offers a much-needed opportunity for both farmers and consumers. It 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. However, these benefits will only materialise if the European Parliament adopts its position at second reading without delay.

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 too often placed ideology ahead of science, leaving consumers uncertain about the real nature of their food options. For this reason, Farm Europe and Eat Europe call on the European Parliament to assume its responsibility and ensure the swift adoption of the text, so that farmers can finally access the tools they urgently need.

In the context of the discussion on the EU Plan on Cardiovascular health, and the current debate on the European Parliament Non-Legislative Initiative (INI) on cardiovascular diseases, Eat Europe and Farm Europe sent a letter to all members of the EP Committee on Public Health, calling on European institutions to address the issue of alcohol consumption with a serious, balanced approach firmly grounded in scientific evidence.

Preventing cardiovascular diseases is a public health priority, just as it is essential to decisively tackle alcohol abuse, one of the most significant risk factors. Both organizations stress the importance of clearly distinguishing between abuse and moderate consumption, avoiding oversimplifications that risk undermining the effectiveness of proposed policies.

Speaking generically about “alcohol consumption” can be misleading. Scientific literature shows that health effects depend on multiple factors, including the type of beverage, patterns, and context of consumption, as well as overall lifestyle. In particular, wine is not merely a solution of ethanol, but a phytocomplex characterized by a matrix of components – including polyphenols, anthocyanins, resveratrol, and other bioactive compounds – which may help modulate its overall effects on the body.

Recent studies also suggest that moderate wine consumption, within a balanced dietary and behavioural context, may be associated with beneficial effects on the cardiovascular system. Such findings should not be dismissed as mere “common thinking” or stigmatized in the public debate.

In this context, Eat Europe and Farm Europe express concern over approaches that overlook a significant share of scientific evidence in favour of uniform, non-differentiated strategies. Policies based solely on restrictive measures risk being not only ineffective but also counterproductive. In particular, the hypothesis of a generalized increase in taxation does not appear to deliver concrete public health outcomes and may instead encourage a shift toward lower-quality products.

At the same time, the organizations acknowledge that ongoing information initiatives – including labelling tools and off-label communication – are contributing to greater consumer awareness and fostering more responsible choices.

“In such a sensitive area, it is essential to remain anchored in evidence rather than ideology. Distinguishing between moderate consumption and abuse is key to designing policies that are both effective and credible,” said Luigi Scordamaglia, President of Eat Europe.

“The European Union has the opportunity to adopt a balanced approach that recognizes the scientific complexity of the issue while safeguarding both public health and a strategic agri-food sector,” added Yves Madre, President of Farm Europe.

Ahead of the vote on the INI scheduled for early May, Eat Europe and Farm Europe call on the European Parliament to adopt a more balanced, evidence-based approach—one that distinguishes between risky behaviours and responsible consumption patterns, and acknowledges the complexity of the issue without resorting to simplistic narratives.

Today, Farm Europe and the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB) announce the launch of a strategic dialogue and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding formalizing their cooperation, aimed at shaping a common pathway for the future of European and Ukrainian agriculture in the context of the EU enlargement process. While this enlargement offers significant political and geopolitical opportunities, it also raises major structural challenges for both EU and Ukrainian farming sectors. Addressing these challenges requires anticipation, in-depth analysis, strengthened mutual understanding, and the development of converging solutions. 

This dialogue, facilitated by Dacian Cioloș, former Prime Minister of Romania and former European Commissioner for Agriculture, will focus on defining a shared trajectory for agriculture and agri-food value chains. It will aim at maximizing the benefits of integration for both sides, while mitigating potential risks, by building joint recommendations grounded in a common assessment of challenges and opportunities.

The initiative will focus on the most pressing strategic issues to ensure that Ukraine’s integration into the European Union reinforces Europe’s food sovereignty and strengthens the role of farmers in delivering a climate-neutral economy, notably through the development of the bioeconomy.

Key areas of work will include:

• the definition of a common pathway towards economic and environmental performance for both arable and livestock systems;
• the socio-economic dimension of agriculture, particularly in areas facing rural exodus; 
• the digital and climate transitions in agriculture;
• and an assessment of the resilience of EU and Ukrainian agri-food systems, including lessons learned from wartime conditions.

Through this structured dialogue, Farm Europe and UCAB aim to contribute to a forward-looking, coherent and balanced vision of agriculture in an enlarged European Union.

Dacian Cioloș (Facilitator of the dialogue)

“The enlargement of the European Union to Ukraine is not only a geopolitical decision—it is a transformation of our agricultural model. Agriculture is a major component of strategic autonomy, this chapter cannot be limited to a technocratic and administrative negotiation. It has to be fully part of a political dialogue in which stakeholders discuss and table possible pathways to decision-makers. Therefore, I very much welcome this common initiative and will be delighted to oversee this process and act as a facilitator. ”

Luc Vernet, Secretary General  of Farm Europe

“With this initiative, we want to move beyond short-term debates and posturing. We will contribute to a structured, fact-based reflection on the future of European agriculture. Enlargement must strengthen—not weaken—our collective capacity to produce, to innovate, and to ensure food security. This requires a common approach, clear priorities, and the willingness to invest in the agriculture of tomorrow. I thank UCAB for their willingness to engage with Farm Europe in constructive work. ”

Oleh Khomenko, Executive Director, UCAB (Ukrainian Agribusiness Club)

“Ukraine’s agricultural sector has demonstrated its resilience under extraordinary circumstances. As we move closer to the European Union, it is essential to build a shared understanding with our European partners of common challenges we all face in making sure our sectors remain competitive and deliver the food security Europe and world needs. This dialogue is a key step to ensure that integration creates opportunities for farmers on both sides and contributes to a stronger, more resilient European agri-food system. As agriculture is essential to the Ukrainian economy and given its influence in the world, it will call for a strategic thinking at EU level both before and after the enlargement process.”

In response to the geopolitical and economic crisis triggered by the war, the European Commission has urgently convened fertilizer companies and representatives of the agricultural sector to analyze the impact on European agriculture and European fertilizer production. Farm Europe welcomes this initiative that highlighted the need to move toward a more integrated value chain approach to drive low carbon solutions focusing on farmers and their capacity to combine both economic and environmental performance.

During the meeting, Farm Europe highlighted that the war has only exacerbated a fertiliser challenges that farmers, certain Member States and members of Parliament have been warning about for months. The challenges are structural, not cyclical. To limit the explanation solely to events in the Middle East would be to demonstrate a culpably short-sighted vision or a refusal to address the root of the problem.

Via the integration of fertilisers into the Emissions Trading System (ETS), the European Union has chosen to achieve its green transition by structurally increasing the prices of fertilisers for European farmers together with a carbon border tax designed to equalise CO2 pricing between EU producers and importers via the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).

However, such a cost-driven framework, focused on greening supply rather than stimulating low carbon demand, is proving to be ineffective: Europe is losing its conventional fertilisers (10 million tonnes of EU production capacity have been shut down or placed on hold), its agricultural production with a reduction of 4 Mha in cereal area, and at the same time, transition toward low carbon fertilisers is not taking place in the EU, most low-carbon projects having been cancelled or requiring heavy subsidy to survive.

While the Commission still refuses to suspend the CBAM on imported fertilizers, there is an urgent need for a real paradigm shift in the financing model of the transition for the fertilisers-cereals value chain that lays down the conditions for a competitive, sustainable and resilient value chain in Europe.

To achieve this, Farm Europe considers that the current ETS-CBAM model to finance transition needs to be revisited before 2030 in order to create a credible financing pathway for agricultural transition toward low carbon value chains. The Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) can be leveraged to become the cornerstone of the decarbonation of the value chain, providing true incentives and fair pricing of CO2 along the value chain, focusing on combining fertilisers and field emission reduction efforts, and opening up access for farmers to sell their carbon credits on regulated carbon markets.

Today, voluntary carbon certification systems and markets do not cover the costs of carbon farming while alignment with regulated market price levels would make investment in low-carbon technologies viable, as long as the EU keeps a technology-neutral approach toward low carbon fertilisers, and focuses on ‘Made in EU’ solutions given the high circumvention risks associated with global green value chains. In this context, regulatory barriers to organic fertilisers — including manure, digestate from biogas and processed organic nutrients — should also be removed, and true leverage capacity deployed, including via the European Competitiveness Fund to foster investments.

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.