Member of the European Parliament Bas Eickhout (GroenLinks) calls the new European agricultural agreement a missed opportunity for sustainable climate policy and for a future healthy agricultural sector. Next Tuesday, the new CAP (2021-2027) will be adopted in Strasbourg.
Eickhout believes that the Green Deal environmental targets and the F2F food strategy are incorporated so minimally and so tentatively in the new CAP that, in most EU countries, too little will actually come of it. Moreover, according to the Greens, so many tasks, supervision, and powers are assigned to national and regional governments that it will be difficult to adjust policies in time.
In an interview with the agricultural LTO magazine Nieuwe Oogst, Eickhout said that the Netherlands and the LTO have relied too heavily in the EU on flexibility per country and on low standards. “There will soon be a race to the bottom among the 27 EU countries. In many countries, the bar will be set as low as possible.”
“We have known for years that agriculture will need to change significantly. Remkes already said that not everything can continue. A modern and well-organized agricultural nation like the Netherlands would particularly have an interest in a stricter, future-oriented European agricultural policy. But none of that will happen with this tentative CAP,” Eickhout said.
Not only the Greens, but also environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the climate youth of Greta Thunberg find the CAP compromise far too thin and unacceptable. They believe agriculture must stop using chemical weed killers and growth promoters.
“In 2019, European voters chose climate-friendly, green change. Ursula von der Leyen and her commissioners then spoke grandly about a European Green Deal. But now they simply agree to a completely outdated European agricultural policy. The EU still supports intensive livestock farming on an industrial scale. It will continue to encourage farmers to use synthetic pesticides,” said the GroenLinks member.
Dutch MEP Anja Hazekamp (Party for the Animals) will submit an amendment during Tuesday’s vote to reject the new CAP, which is responsible for around 270 billion euros in European agricultural subsidies.
In the coming years, about 54 billion euros of EU tax money will be spent annually on agricultural subsidies. Intensive agriculture and livestock farming benefit especially. According to her, that directly leads to biodiversity loss, water and air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and unacceptable animal welfare violations.
Megastables and large-scale arable farming, which involve heavy use of artificial fertilizers and even the condition to no longer provide targeted subsidies for the breeding of fighting bulls— a demand the European Parliament made following an amendment from the Party for the Animals and GroenLinks—have been removed from the agreement by EU member states. As a result, countries may still subsidize bullfighting with EU funds.
“A transition to a fair, healthy, animal- and environmentally-friendly food system is essential to tackle the global climate and biodiversity crisis. Agricultural policy must be directed at actually initiating that transition. The agricultural policy proposed undermines ambitions regarding nature, the environment, climate, and animal welfare. There are too many loopholes in this law; subsidizing harmful activities will continue if this agricultural policy is adopted,” Hazekamp said.