In the climax of the European Parliament’s first plenary session of the new mandate, Ursula von der Leyen was re-elected for a second term as European Commission President on 18th July.
Receiving the backing of 401 MEPs in Strasbourg, von der Leyen exceeded expectations in a vote many analysts anticipated would hinge on striking careful balances on sensitive policy issues in her address to the Parliament.
Given the unprecedented farming protests that have recently swept across the bloc, the Commission President wisely devoted a substantial portion of her speech to agriculture.
Declaring that “we must strengthen the position of farmers in the food chain” and promising to present a new policy vision for the agri-food sector to fuel its long-term competitiveness and sustainability, von der Leyen has sent a strong message to farmers that will need to be followed with concrete action.
Indeed, while the EU executive’s chief is ostensibly advancing a well-balanced agenda between Green Deal commitments, food productivity and farmers’ incomes, diverging views among the ‘Grand Coalition’ parties will have to be navigated carefully to deliver for Europe’s farmers.
Policy forecast emerging in Parliament
Although post-election negotiations have confirmed that the three political forces of Brussels’s political centre – the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Renew Europe and the European People’s Party (EPP) – share a fundamental priority of bolstering farmers’ supply chain bargaining power and tackling unfair trading practices, agri-food cracks within the future majority coalition are already emerging.
Sustainability remains the main bone of contention, with S&D and Renew Europe broadly calling for greater ambition than the EPP.
Renew notably intends to revive the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation (SUR) – a core pillar of last term’s stalling ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy which would halve pesticide use by 2030 – after the file’s rejection by MEPs last year, while proposing faster regulatory approval for new gene-editing techniques (NGTs) to support this chemical pesticides phase-out.
While S&D has shied away from a hard pesticides target, the group will push for new legislation to advance this “key objective” in addition to a sustainable food systems law proposal – all Farm to Fork policies that the EPP has left out of its new policy agenda.
Agri-food trade policy is further dividing the coalition, with S&D’s and Renew’s demands for “mirror clauses” to ensure third-country products meet EU standards clashing with the EPP’s aim to seal the long-delayed Mercosur trade deal despite widespread environmental and labour concerns.
These policy divergences highlight the complex negotiations ahead for the EU’s coalition in balancing sustainability with agricultural and trade priorities.
Nutrition label battleground
Re-elected as coordinator for the Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) on 19 July, Italian MEP and EPP veteran Herbert Dorfmann has aptly summarised the fundamental issue with recent EU agri-food policy, asserting that the Commission seems to have “neglected agriculture” to focus on ‘Farm to Fork’ policies “without taking farmers onboard.”
Introduced in 2020 as part of the agricultural Green Deal, the EU executive’s harmonised nutrition label proposal has been one of the high-profile examples of this trend, with Dorfmann notably dismissing one of the candidates for bloc-wide implementation, France’s Nutri-Score label, as “misleading” to consumers.
Decrying Nutri-Score’s penalisation of “national delicacies, like hams and cheeses,” Dorfmann – like many nutritional science researchers – has criticised the system’s flawed algorithm for failing to factor in normal serving sizes, degree of food processing and presence of additives.
In July, the Exporters Association of Crete has advanced the same arguments, with the organisation’s president Alkiviadis Kalambokis writing that the Nutri-Score’s “lack of evaluation for the total quality profile and valuable ingredients” of natural, single-ingredient foods leads the label to “misevaluate Greek, and Mediterranean, food products.”
Citing the prime example of olive oil, which initially received a Nutri-Score ‘D’ and has still been denied a green ‘A’ by the updated algorithm despite its widely acknowledged health benefits, Kalambokis points to a growing coalition of EU countries – including Romania, Czechia, Latvia and Portugal – turning away from the label due to its confusion of consumers and unfair impact on local producers.
This mounting Nutri-Score opposition – which has even reached former bastion Switzerland – where the label is being dropped by major agri-food companies and faces a potential legislative ban – align with an emerging trend of local EU farmers’ vital economic, social and cultural importance finally being recognised in Brussels.
Nascent signs of hope for future
As Dorfmann, an agronomist by trade, rightly concluded just days before the confirmation of the Parliament’s new AGRI committee, Brussels’s “method must change,” positing that EU agricultural policy must make “farming an attractive profession again in Europe, especially for young people, that allows farmers to earn an adequate income.”
Joining Dorfmann as a full member of the newly-formed AGR, influential French MEP and Renew Europe leader Valérie Hayer has similarly asserted that “we need to ensure that farmers receive higher incomes and that they can be supported in their ecological transition,” with her background growing up in a farming family set to help Brussels develop well-informed farming policies.
Mirroring Hayer’s insistence on avoiding a false agriculture-sustainability dilemma, Commission President von der Leyen’s speech to MEPs before her re-election highlighted that “that anyone who manages nature sustainably and helps balance the carbon budget must be properly rewarded,” while emphasising farmers’ role in shaping Europe’s landscapes, culture and food security.
Moving forward, the EU executive’s forthcoming vision for agriculture must crucially include innovative, bolstered Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) eco-scheme payments to help farmers adopt green practices and give Brussels a foundation on which to build a broader agri-food agenda centred around EU food producers’ economic needs and realities.
In the new term, the EU’s centrist coalition must quickly resolve internal sustainability divisions and prioritise meaningful support for farmers, aligning policies with their everyday challenges.
Avoiding extremes in sustainability or market liberalisation will be essential in avoiding the further alienation of farmers, as well as the rise of extremist parties. By combining fair compensation and trade practice goals with realistic environmental policies, EU policymakers can create a stable, supportive environment for farmers and rebuild this damaged relationship.
