Following the Commissioner’s recent statement to the European Parliament on sustainable biofuels, Farm Europe has written to Commissioner Tzitzikóstas to recall that EU crop-based biofuels should be fully included in the category of sustainable biofuels. They do not carry a high indirect land-use change (ILUC) risk, have not contributed to higher food prices or land displacement, and generate significant co-products including high-protein animal feed, advanced biofuels and biochemicals. Far from competing with food security, their production actively supports it.

The ongoing trend of agricultural land abandonment across the EU — driven by insufficient farm profitability — should led the European Commission to strengthen the demand from EU crop-based biofuel production, reinforcing food sovereignty, EU strategic autonomy, and rural economic resilience, and paving the way to step up other bioeconomy streams.

Therefore, Farm Europe calls on the Commission to uphold the principle of technological neutrality across all relevant legislative frameworks — including the ongoing revision of CO₂ standards for light- and heavy-duty vehicles — and to ensure that all sustainable renewable fuels are duly recognised. Crop-based EU biofuels are an immediately deployable, affordable decarbonisation tool that draws on existing infrastructure and vehicle fleets, generates income for EU farmers, and supports Europe’s energy sovereignty.

The letter also raises a critical market integrity concern: imports of Annex IX biofuels from China rose sevenfold between 2017 and 2023, reaching approximately 3 million tonnes — roughly 20% of total EU biofuels consumption. A substantial share of these imports has been identified as fraudulent, involving the mislabelling of virgin palm oil and its derivatives as used cooking oil or other qualifying feedstocks. This fraud, documented by the European Court of Auditors (2016 and 2023) and acknowledged in the Commission’s own implementing decision of 18 July 2025, is structurally incentivised by the double-counting mechanism under the Renewable Energy Directive.

Farm Europe warns that without addressing this fraud, the genuine availability of advanced biofuels is markedly overstated, and the case for marginalising crop-based EU biofuels rests on a distorted picture of the market.

Today, the European Commission presented its long-awaited Fertilisers Action Plan. Farm Europe welcomes the recognition by the European Commission of the scale of the challenge and the need for urgent actions. However, key practical elements are missing to send a strong signal to farmers and to the industry such as the level of the most needed emergency support via the crisis reserve as well as concrete policy directions ahead of the ETS revisions, when it comes to the trajectory for free allowances and CBAM related to fertilisers.

The commitment to create pathways between CRCF and ETS revenues is a move in the right direction to create a true business model for emission reductions via incentives for farmers, without agriculture being covered by ETS, but this commitment should be accompanied by stronger short term measures to overcome the ongoing crisis.

The intention to guarantee policy coherence between the fertilisers action plan and the up-coming livestock strategy is also a positive orientation of the action plan. In that regard, the willingness to promote the movement of nutrients from livestock regions with structural surpluses to regions with nutrient needs within the single market is a good step forward. The will to unlock the potential of digestate via an extension of the RENURE Act, boosting biomethane production, fostering bio-based fertilisers opening up the scope for innovation enhancing circularity are also steps in the right direction.

In practical terms, the focus of EU policy should be “efficiency”, moving away from regulations that discourage production or even encourage reductions. The option for Member States to re-open their CAP strategic plan focusing on efficiency is a positive signal which is blurred by mixing new potential ecoschemes with agro-environmental measures while complementarity between those interventions should be encouraged, clarifying the perimeter of the revision of national strategic plans.

Those medium to long term steps forward of the action plan should urgently be accompanied by short term relief to insure continuity of EU food systems facing a major shock since the triggering of the war in Ukraine, aggravated by the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. European farmers are facing an increasingly untenable situation, which is already reflected by the losses of agricultural land across Europe.

With nitrogen fertiliser prices still 70% above 2024 levels in April 2026, European farmers are already reducing acreage and switching away from certain crops, in particular wheat. The Commission’s emergency agricultural reserve remains undefined in amount and eligibility criteria. The only fully operational short-term measure — the temporary State aid framework adopted on 29 April — rests with Member States. This is not enough. Farmers need to know today what support they can count on before the next sowing season.

Farm Europe and Eat Europe have addressed a letter to the European Commission raising concerns regarding the import of genetically modified (GM) cane sugar from Brazil and the implications for compliance with EU legislation, traceability standards, and market transparency after the recent provisional entry into force of the EU–Mercosur Agreement.

Brazil, the world’s largest producer and exporter of sugar, authorises and cultivates genetically modified sugar cane varieties alongside conventional ones. However, according to available information, no effective segregation between GM and non-GM sugar cane is carried out during processing, raising concerns that raw sugar exported to the European Union may derive from mixed production streams.

Over the past five years, EU Member States have imported approximately 3.6 million tonnes of sugar from Brazil, including more than 750,000 tonnes in the last year alone. These volumes are expected to rise further under the EU–Mercosur Agreement, which introduces a new annual duty-free quota of 180,000 tonnes of sugar.

Under EU legislation, food and feed consisting of, containing, or produced from genetically modified organisms must be authorised before being placed on the EU market. While certain genetically modified sugar beet varieties are authorised in the Union for import and processing, no genetically modified sugar cane varieties appear to be currently authorised under the EU GMO framework for food and feed uses.

In their letter, Eat Europe and Farm Europe warn that the inability to reliably distinguish between GM and non-GM sugar imports raises significant concerns regarding regulatory compliance, traceability, consumer transparency, food safety, and environmental protection.

The organisations are calling on the European Commission to clarify which measures are currently in place — or are envisaged — to ensure that sugar imported into the EU complies with existing GMO legislation and that adequate traceability and control are guaranteed throughout the supply chain. Eat Europe and Farm Europe emphasise that, in the context of bilateral relations with Brazil and the implementation phase of the EU–Mercosur Agreement, efforts should be made to ensure effective segregation between GM and non-GM sugar production streams in order to prevent non-compliant products from entering the European market.

The letter also requests further information on the implementation of the monitoring mechanisms established under Regulation (EU) 2026/687 concerning safeguard clauses within the EU–Mercosur framework. In particular, Eat Europe and Farm Europe seek clarification regarding the tools and data sources the Commission intends to rely on to monitor import volumes, price developments, and market dynamics for sensitive agricultural sectors such as sugar, meat products, and rice.

The organisations underline that effective and timely monitoring of trade flows is essential not only for the possible activation of safeguard measures, but also for ensuring compliance with EU regulatory requirements related to genetically modified organisms and traceability.

Eat Europe and Farm Europe also stress the importance of transparency for market operators and stakeholders, calling for accessible monitoring instruments such as dedicated dashboards or reporting mechanisms allowing up-to-date tracking of relevant market developments.

Farm Europe warmly welcome today’s adoption by the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) of the draft opinion by MEP Carlo Fidanza on the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF).

The ECF constitutes essential additional funding opportunities outside the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) to contribute to the transition to more efficient food systems. It is therefore essential to explicitly mention agriculture, food security, and agri-food value chains within the ECF. The earmarking must be binding, transparent, predictable and clearly opened to farmers. 

The draft opinion identifies the Competitiveness Fund as a key instrument to finance large-scale projects of European interest that exceed the capacity of individual Member States. These investments are considered essential to reinforce the resilience of the EU’s agri-food system, particularly in light of increasing climate, economic, and geopolitical pressures.

Against a backdrop of growing geopolitical instability, the Committee underlines that control over food resources is a key component of economic resilience and contributes to the EU’s broader security and defence capacity. An allocated budget in the ECF for strategic storage capacity for agricultural products and key inputs is therefore essential.

Farm Europe underlines the necessity, as stated in the opinion, of a dedicated ECF support to innovation and water in the agricultural sector, notably water resilience investments (irrigation efficiency, water storage, sustainable management of water resources for agriculture) and digitalisation (precision agriculture, digital services, decision-support tools, and data infrastructures). Such investments are deemed critical to maintaining agricultural production and preserving Europe’s agri-food excellence.

We now urge the European Parliament to confirm this positive signal in plenary. A strong endorsement will provide clear and positive perspectives for the entire agri-food sector.

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.