The European Commission on Monday (6 May) tabled an extensive package covering plant and animal health it says will strengthen standards for the whole food chain, but others call it a victory for the seed industry. EU ...

Senior EU politicians will gather for a conference in Brussels Tuesday on how to reach economic and monetary union (EMU) amid strong divisions between member states about the speed and order of the successive steps. The ...

The European Commission will push ahead with its original plan to place a two-year ban on pesticides thought to kill bees. Tonio Borg, the EU commissioner for health, pledged in Brussels on Monday (29 April) “to do my ...

European agricultural ministers reached an agreement on Tuesday (19 March) to overhaul the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP). Ireland’s Simon Coveney, who chaired the two-day marathon talks that ended late Tuesday ...

A ban on bee-killing pesticides was postponed on Friday (15 March) when member state experts failed to agree on a binding decision to end their use. “The text was not adopted and now we’ll have to reflect on what to do ...

MEPs have voted to water down measures aimed at linking farm subsidies to environmental protection as part of reforms to the EU's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). During a marathon, two-hour voting session in Strasbourg ...

The European Commission is urging member states to intensify DNA tests on meat products to see how much horsemeat there is in EU "beef." “The tests will be on DNA in meat products in all member states,” health ...

Agreement on EU farm subsidies remains far from clear, after the European Commission Monday (11 February) said that the European Parliament could unpick the deal reached last week at the EU budget summit. Leaders went ...

EU leaders gather in Brussels at the end of the week (4-10 February) for a second attempt to agree the bloc's budget framework for 2014-2020. At stake is how to spend the around 1 trillion euro over the seven year ...

Europe is at a critical juncture, both economically and politically. Governments at all levels continue to feel the squeeze on public resources. The next long term budget for the EU must reflect this by directing EU ...

MEPs are set to back increased spending on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), as parliament flexes legislative muscles acquired under the Lisbon treaty. Speaking after a first round of voting on Wednesday (23 January ...

Jean Claude Juncker is to bow out as President of the Eurogroup this week when the 17 eurozone finance ministers gather in Brussels for their first meeting of 2013. Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem who already ...

EU officials trying to get to work on Tuesday (27 November) faced a second day of problems as hundreds of tractors blocked main roads to the institutions. The protest - organised by the European Milk Board (EMB), a ...

Dairy farmers from all over the EU descended on Brussels Monday to protest low milk prices and the planned liberalisation of the sector in 2015. The movement - dubbed "1,000 tractors to Brussels" - saw hundreds of ...

About 730,000 more people will lose their jobs in the EU before the economic crisis starts to ease off, the European Commission said on Wednesday (7 November). The grim outlook, part of the commission's regular economic ...

Tuesday's (16 October) World Food Day took place against the backdrop of a looming food crisis - the third in five years. Agriculture chiefs meeting in Rome this week must see that repeated food crises are no ...

The European Commission adopted rules on Tuesday (25 September) to increase transparency on farmers who receive billions in EU subsidies every year. "We not only have to reform the CAP [common agricultural policy] to ...

Energy ministers meeting in Cyprus on Monday (17 September) are having a first debate on EU commission plans to cap biofuels made from food crops from 2020 in a bid to limit their impact on soaring food prices. ...

The United Nation's agency for Food and Agriculture (FAO) says the recent spike in the price of maize and soja is causing problems for the EU's animal feed sector. "We already see that the prices of the feed sector is ...

EU foreign ministers have "warned" Israel they will take a tougher approach to exports originating in illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The ministers in a statement on Monday (14 May) detailing Israel's long-term ...

Europe has been hit by a ‘heroin drought’, according to the latest EU report on drug use. The streets of Europe, in particular those in the UK and Ireland, have seen a sharp disruption in the supply of the opiate in the ...

Six member states on Thursday (20 October) blocked the renewal of a €500 million EU food aid scheme, cutting it by three quarters from 1 January. Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden ...

The European Commission on Wednesday published keenly awaited proposals to overhaul its farm policy from 2014, capping payments to single farms and obliging the EU's 12 million landowners to become greener. Under the ...

The dynamic duo at the heart of European power, Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, are to meet once again on Sunday in Berlin and thrash out their substantial differences over how to respond to the ...

Certain Belgian employees receive up to €250 worth a year in eco-cheques. They are designed to promote ecological buying by enticing people to buy bio products. They are also a way for employers to survive the ...

More than a third of EU agro-environmental aid is given to farms that have no ecological problems on site or within a 10-km range, a study carried out by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) shows. "The current policy ...

The coming week will see all eyes once again focussed sharply on the rapidly metastasising eurozone crisis, although little official is programmed. According to EU officials everything is “still fluid”. Greece is fast ...

The relationship between Europeans and their food is growing in complexity, governed by cultural, social and economic factors and influenced ever more by unpredictable weather patterns and the rising middle class in ...

Red soil, breezy air, steep mountains and an all-embracing sun. It's still the end of winter in the wine-making region around Cape Town, so work in the vineyards is yet to begin. But inside the caves, barrels are being ...