Christina Alonso
Updated Thursday, March 28, 2024-02:03
Europe (Te) Matters / 6 Ukraine, the greatest challenge of the European Union
If the European legislative framework is complex in itself, it becomes especially cumbersome when it comes to the agricultural sector, both due to the tangle of rules that make up the regulatory framework, as well as the idiosyncrasies of each Member State and the need to combine measures. to support the sector with the environmental commitments of the European Union. "The countryside
is one of the most delicate issues that are addressed in community institutions
, especially in a context of mobilizations and on the eve of elections," contextualizes a public official with extensive experience in the decision-making processes that define agrarian policies. European.
The different positions are evident not only between States, but also between the different political formations represented in the European institutions. Proof of this is that Spanish MEPs from the two majority groups - popular and socialist - maintain radically opposite positions on some issues, despite the fact that both are called to defend the interests of farmers and ranchers in our country. The Green Deal, which cuts across many policies and seeks to place the EU on the path towards an ecological transition, ignites the agricultural debate at a time of high tension for a sector that demands exceptional and urgent solutions from Europe.
On the calendar there is a date marked in red:
April 30
. Before its dissolution ahead of the elections in June, the European Parliament will have to have taken a decision on the package of measures proposed by the Commission, at the proposal of the Member States, to respond to the demands they have made. on the table the farmers and ranchers who have mobilized throughout Europe in recent weeks.
In the legislature that is about to run out,
Parliament has debated and given the green light to several important initiatives
. Among the most notable, greater protection of geographical indications has recently been approved, with great impact in Spain; a proposal on new genomic techniques to support farmers in the green transition; or an agreement to prevent pests in agriculture and especially in the trade of products from third countries, a particularly sensitive issue for the Spanish countryside and the seed of the protests in which farmers in some countries are demanding the imposition of mirror clauses to demand the same labor and phytosanitary requirements for imports.
Most of the
core
initiatives have gone ahead with the support of the socialists and the rejection of the popular ones, such as the last reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which introduced new conditions linked to environmental protection; the
Farm to Fork
strategy
, which seeks to evolve towards a more sustainable food model; the EU Biodiversity Strategy for the protection of fauna and flora; or more recently the Nature Restoration Law, which sets the goal of restoring at least 20% of European terrestrial and marine areas by 2030 and all ecosystems that need it by 2050. Other proposals have proven so controversial that The European Commission has ended up withdrawing them to try to appease farmers' protests, such as the new regulation on pesticides.
Where there is more unanimity between PP and PSOE is around the current Commission proposal to make the conditionality of the CAP more flexible, which is now entering discount time, since
the States have just one month to reach an agreement
and implement measures are underway that may come into force this year. The last plenary session of Parliament, which will be held at the end of April, will be key. Last Tuesday the EU Council of Agriculture Ministers met in a decisive meeting to urge Parliament to quickly adopt the proposed changes.
PENDING ISSUES
The Spanish socialist MEP
Clara Aguilera
has been the rapporteur of the agreement for the review of the phytosanitary regulation, which must now be endorsed by the Council and Parliament. In conversation with EL MUNDO, he explains that "in this legislature the agricultural sector has been in the crosshairs of the legislation and in the media focus, after
months of mobilizations throughout the EU
that have revealed a major crisis that involves both the PAC as well as the Green Pact". Although regulatory activity has been intense in recent post-pandemic years, important issues have remained pending in the portfolio of the community institutions that will not be able to be resolved in the final stretch of the legislature, since Parliament is going to prioritize the package of urgent measures to defuse the rural revolt and prevent the protests from clouding the electoral campaign.
"In this last month
it will not be possible to complete all the pending initiatives,
which will have to be addressed in the next legislature," advances Aguilera in reference to proposals such as the Land Law, which affects agricultural land, or the regulation of the new genomic techniques, pending tripartite dialogue with the Council. These and other rules will remain in the pipeline.
The urgent thing now is to move forward with the proposal to modify the CAP regulations. "It would be a mistake not to approve it in the little that remains of the legislature so that it comes into force this year and farmers can take advantage of this simplification that excludes farms that have less than 10 hectares from many conditionality requirements, which in
Spain would benefit to 55% of recipients
of PAC aid," says the socialist MEP, who insists that "it would be a relief for many small farmers and very positive for the entire sector, because the demands on controls and sanctions related to the good practices, so everyone would benefit from this bureaucratic simplification in applying for aid or subsidies".
For his part, PP MEP
Juan Ignacio Zoido
positively values the simplification of the CAP and the reduction of the conditionalities imposed on aid recipients, but considers that "they are insufficient." Zoido accuses Minister Luis Planas of "wanting to simplify now, when this Government is the one that has introduced the most conditionality." "He is nonsense," he emphasizes.
For the popular parliamentarian, "Europe has legislated behind the backs of farmers due to the obsession with the
Green Deal
of the former vice president of the Commission,
Frans Timmermans
, father of the Farm to Fork strategy and the CAP with more requirements and conditionality ". In his opinion, the legislation implemented at this stage "has not been based on scientific but ideological criteria and has not addressed the problems of farmers." The result, he assures, has been "to produce less and more expensively, which we are now noticing in the shopping cart." "The countryside has been damaged and these are the consequences, which is why farmers are taking to the streets throughout Europe," he says.
"It is not about denying the Green Pact, but about accommodating it to the needs of farmers and ranchers
, counting on them, because they are not the problem, but part of the solution," he clarifies.
Franco-Spanish front
On March 15, the Commission released the package of measures to make the CAP requirements more flexible, which Parliament is now expected to endorse. Two weeks earlier, 22 EU countries, in a letter promoted by Spain and France, asked the executive vice president for the European Green Deal,
Maro Šefovi
, and the Commissioner for Agriculture,
Janusz Wojciechowski
, for "very short-term" responses to problems "urgent" from the community sector so that some measures can come into force already in 2024.
At Tuesday's meeting, European Agriculture officials gave the green light to the Commission's proposal and agreed to send the text to Parliament to speed up the procedure so that it can be approved in April and published as soon as possible in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) for its entry into force retroactively from January 1, 2024.