The Commission proposals on the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies have been released without any impact assessment – on the agriculture production, on prices, on the trade balance, on food security. It is worth quickly reminding which their key targets were, to be achieved by 2030: 10% agricultural land set-aside -20% chemical fertilizers -50% […]
The European Commission recently published its Renewable Energy Progress Report[1] in which it highlights the positive contribution of domestically sourced biofuels in reducing GHG emissions. The Commission assessment clearly asserts the sustainability of biofuels produced from EU feedstock, invalidating its concerns relating to land use or food security and demonstrating them to be wholly unfounded […]
In the first weeks of November, several EU countries have adopted recovery plans for coping with COVID-19-related impacts on the agriculture sectors. In Denmark, the large-scale culling of mink potentially infected with a COVID-19 mutation dominated the headlines for several days. At European level, Parliament and Council reached a provisional deal on a EU recovery […]
In a Fact-Sheet published this week “Working with Parliament and Council to make the CAP reform fit for the European Green Deal” the Commission tries to re-write the history of the latest CAP reform. The Commission criticises the European Parliament and Council positions because they ask for flexibility in the implementation of eco-schemes and that […]
During the months of September and October, the world of wine has been characterized by harvests. According to the annual OIV estimates, after the exceptionally high production of 2018, for the second consecutive year, the 2020 world wine production volume is expected to be below average. At the institutional level, the Parliament and the Agriculture […]
This month has been marked by the Nobel price nomination for chemistry to the inventors of the CRISP/Cas9, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, and the discovery of a new methodology of use this technique, notably with the Cas3 enzyme, so to allow to work with bigger parts of DNA. Moreover, CRISP/Cas9 have been used to […]
In October, most important developments in the agriculture and livestock sector are linked to the CAP reform, agreed upon by the European Parliament and the Council. The new CAP poses different challenges and opportunities for the livestock and dairy sector, which causes debates among different stakeholders. One of the most discussed topics this month are […]
In October, several EU countries have adopted recovery plans for coping with COVID-19-related impacts on the agriculture sectors. At European level, the organic farming regulation has been postponed until January 2021. An exchange with MEPs from the Agri Committee in the European Parliament on 26 October highlighted the difficulties the wine, as well as the […]
This month has been signed by some important developments in the reform of the CAP, notably, the European Parliament and the Council agreed on their positions prior the formal start of negotiations. In parallel, the Parliament, which hold two plenary session in October, decided to increase the 2030 greenhouse gasses reduction target to -60% compared […]
This week, the Agricultural Ministers met in Luxembourg to discuss and vote on the Council conclusions of the CAP post-2020 legislatives proposals, notably on the Strategic Plan regulation, the Horizontal regulation, and the Common Market Organization regulation. At the same time, the European Parliament voted on the same files during the plenary session of October […]