European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gave no reassurances on finalising the missing pieces of the EU’s flagship sustainable food policy in her annual State of the Union address on Wednesday (13 September), instead proposing a change of course in the current agri-food debate.

After last year’s uproar in the farming sector that they were overlooked in the annual speech, von der Leyen made a point of explicitly thanking the EU’s farmers in her address, expressing her appreciation for “providing us with food day after day”.

She stressed the need to protect Europe’s nature but added this must be balanced with food security, which remains an “essential task”.

“For us in Europe, this task of agriculture – producing healthy food – is the foundation of our agricultural policy,” she said, as well as “self-sufficiency”.

However, she noted the challenges farmers have been up against, listing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and climate change alongside “new obligations” as having a “growing impact on farmers’ work and incomes”.

To move towards a more sustainable agriculture, von der Leyen stressed the need for “more dialogue and less polarisation” in the agri-food policy debate and to do so, she announced the launch of a “strategic dialogue” on the future of agriculture in the EU.

“I am and remain convinced that agriculture and protection of the natural world can go hand in hand. We need both,” she said.

Experienced socialist MEP Paolo De Castro praised von der Leyen’s speech in a post on X, formerly Twitter, saying there is “finally a recognition for farmers’ hard work providing healthy and sufficient food every day.”

EU’s farmers lobby Copa-Cogeca also welcomed the announcement of the “strategic dialogue” while awaiting “further details on the framework of this dialogue, which should form part of the preparatory work for the future CAP [Common Agricultural Policy, the EU’s farming subsidies programme].”

Farm to fork dead in the water?

Although vague on details, the reference to the launch of a “strategic dialogue” looked to many commentators as at least a way to pause-press the Farm to Fork, a strategy the Commission presented in May 2020 outlining a comprehensive approach to how the EU values food sustainability.

Even more prominent is the fact that von der Leyen failed to mention the remaining pieces of legislation of the Farm to Fork, including the Sustainable Food Systems Law, which was supposed to make up the backbone of the EU’s flagship food policy and whose fate now hangs in the balance.

Likewise, the EU’s revision of the animal welfare legislation was conspicuously missing from von der Leyen’s interventions, although the issue was raised multiple times by MEPs replying to her speech.

In a letter of intent accompanying her speech, von der Leyen did not even list the two pieces of legislation among the key priorities for 2024 when it comes to the completion of the European Green Deal – although the dossiers could still be included in the tentative agenda items for the upcoming meetings of the College of Commissioners.

Dropping the new rules on animal welfare can prove problematic as the Commission has made a commitment to come up with a legislative proposal by 2023 to ban cages for a number of farm animals as part of this revision.

This commitment was fulfilling the legal obligation to respond to a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), “End the Cage Age”, which gathered more than a million signatures calling for a transition to a cage-free farming system.

“What happened today is scandalous,” commented Olga Kikou, head of the NGO Compassion in World Farming EU and substitute representative of the ‘End the Cage Age’ European Citizens’ Initiative.

“The Commission has gone back on its word to give animals a life worth living, bowing to the demands of the Big Agri lobby and killing the new animal welfare laws by delaying.”

A message to Weber

Von der Leyen’s speech was appreciated by her political family, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), who have waged a war against the EU’s Green Deal in the name of food security in a bid to court the EU’s rural vote ahead of the European elections in 2024.

Giving her speech in English, German, and French is a tradition for von der Leyen, but switching languages is also a political instrument.

It is certainly no coincidence that the Commission president switched to German, her native language, to address EPP chief Manfred Weber, a fellow German and currently her main political rival for the top job in the next Commission, who has declared the EPP the “farmers party” and used this slogan to oppose elements of von der Leyen’s Green Deal.

When his turn came to reply to von der Leyen as EPP group leader in the Parliament, Weber reiterated the party’s claim of being the “farmers’ party”.

“Producing more food, not less, is our answer to cut inflation on food prices,” he said in a nod to Green Deal files like the Nature Restoration Law or the Commission’s proposal for cutting pesticide use (SUR), which the EPP has slammed as endangering food security.

While von der Leyen insisted on agriculture and nature protection going hand in hand, Weber placed the Green Deal and farmers on opposite sides. “We believe in the basic idea of the Green Deal,” Weber stresses, “but we also listen to our workers, SMEs, farmers, youth.”

Source: Euractiv.com