EU summit celebrates 60 years of the common agricultural policy

EU leaders celebrated the 60th anniversary of the European common agricultural policy (CAP) at the European Parliament. Parliament President Roberta Metsola, French Minister Marc Fesneau, Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, and Norbert Lins, chair of the agricultural parliamentary committee, all spoke during the event. 

The EU officials honored the achievements of ‘sixty years of working together’ in producing sufficient healthy food, not only for the European population but also for the rest of the world. Parliament President Metsola stated that agriculture has made ‘monumental strides’ over the past sixty years. 

However, she also emphasized that agriculture faces significant challenges: barely ten percent of farmers are under 40 years old. The sector needs innovation, modernization, and rejuvenation, she noted.

French Minister Fesneau highlighted that agriculture was not only the first European common policy area but has since grown into the most successful one. Whereas the initial primary goal was to feed the starving domestic population after the war years, the sector has since become a global food supplier. 

EU Commissioner Wojciechowski pointed out that despite progress in European agricultural policy, there remain large disparities between farms in Western Europe and those in the former Eastern European Warsaw Pact countries. These still struggle in many aspects of their food industries with legacies of decades of collectivism and kolkhoz practices.

The Polish-born Commissioner warned against excessive industrialization and scaling up of agriculture. He advocates what he calls ‘agriculture with a social conscience’: better treatment of animals, revitalization of rural areas, and reversing the trend of small family farms being absorbed into larger enterprises.

“My vision is that agriculture is not industry, farmland is not a factory, and animals are not machines,” Wojciechowski said.

Wojciechowski also welcomed that agricultural policy has recently been expanded to include ‘rural development policy,’ which provides European financial support to boost and modernize sparsely populated and less developed rural areas.