EU to Present its Agriculture Plans

Raffaele Fitto, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission of Cohesion and Reforms, will present the “EU Vision for Agriculture and Food” today.

The Vision proposes a general roadmap for the future of EU agricultural policy and comes as a reaction to the farmer protests across Europe in 2024. Policy recommendations within the Vision come from the 2024 Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture which sought to gain input from key stakeholders from the food and agriculture sector. The new roadmap proposed by the EU aims to address issues of standard of living for farmers as well as the issue of environmental sustainability, as the European Commission hopes to get back on track to meet goals set by the European Green Deal. Approved in 2020, the Green Deal aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 2050. EU agriculture is already behind schedule to meet benchmark goals for 2030, such as reducing pesticide use and increasing organic farming.

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will be renegotiated in 2027, and the Vision will be key in providing a framework for the negotiations. Vision proposals include a reconsideration of the CAP’s subsidy system, trade policies to protect European agriculture, and new controls on pesticides, among other policies. As a roadmap, the Vision is attempting to set the food and agriculture sector on a path to both economic and environmental sustainability. In many cases, these two goals conflict, and stakeholders do not agree with the European Commission on all points, such as new pesticide controls. The long-term success of the Vision will depend on how well the EU will be able to balance the economic needs of the agricultural sector with the pursuit of the environmental goals set by the Green Deal.