In March, the European Commission will hold a public consultation on the impact of the Green Deal on agriculture. Over the next four weeks, Brussels is conducting an open consultation on the looming import of environmentally unfriendly raw materials from non-EU countries.
EU Commissioners Wojciechowski (Agriculture), Sinkevicius (Environment), and Kyriakides (Health) said this to the 27 EU agriculture ministers on Monday in Brussels.
Many ministers say the EU must formulate a response to accusations from agricultural circles that, due to the Green Deal, climate policy, and Farm to Fork strategy, European agriculture will soon be able to produce less food, which will most likely also become more expensive. There is concern about imports of cheaper variants that are not produced according to EU criteria.
Therefore, in recent months the European Commission has prepared several new regulations that, although listed separately on the agenda Monday in Brussels, could together become a new ‘green customs regulation.’
For example, the French Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie recently proposed a ‘mirror regulation’: reciprocity for non-EU countries that must comply with the same ‘environmental rules’ as EU producers under trade agreements.
In addition, Brussels has been refining for some time the regulation limiting the import of six products that can only be produced on a very large scale by clearing rainforest areas, such as in Brazil and Indonesia. Current EU forest regulations mainly focus on stopping the import of ‘illegal timber,’ but the illegal expansion of large agricultural areas can also be addressed through their cultivation (soy, etc.).
All EU countries agree that the (outdated) EU trade policy ‘must be aligned’ with the (renewed) climate, environmental, agricultural, and biodiversity policies. However, several countries warned against too high expectations: international rules of the UN and WTO do not allow market protection. Moreover, the EU itself also has rules regarding ‘fair’ trade agreements.
The coherence of all these regulations will be discussed in March with European agricultural bodies, a first study will probably be presented in April, and the European Commission will come with concrete proposals in June.