EUobserver takes a deep dive into the workings and new chairs of every single European Parliament committee for the new 2024-2029 session, in a series of articles first published in our print magazine of October 2024
In the wake of this year’s farmers’ protests, both in Brussels and across Europe, agriculture has rocketed high up the political agenda — prompting concern over how the 27-nation bloc's future legislative plans will cope with the EU’s commitment to tackling the contribution of agriculture and diet to climate change.
“As we've seen in recent months with the presence of tractors in Brussels, Strasbourg, and also in my home city of Prague, all is not well in the agricultural sector, and we need to address this,” the chair of the European Parliament’s agriculture committee Veronika Vrecionová told EUobserver.
Following the farmers’ protests, the revision of certain provisions of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), adopted at the end of the 2019-2024 legislative term, prompted outrage from environmental organisations and even an investigation by the EU Ombudsman.
But the Czech MEP, a member of the rightwing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), said that EU agricultural policies need to be “carefully reviewed and, if necessary, redesigned or revised” to make sure farmers can make a living from farming.
Namely, Vrecionová said that the multi-billion-euro farming spending programme will likely be one of the main focuses of her committee workload over the next five years. The aim? “A CAP free from unnecessary bureaucracy and fit for purpose,” she said.
“I believe that all the political groups that care about the agricultural sector and food security will be supportive and constructive in the process of its revision,” the 59-year-old MEP said, expecting some pushback among the different political parties.
These clashes, she explained, will primarily centre around the dilemma between the push for greater economic self-sufficiency in the agricultural sector, and its ongoing reliance on subsidies.
But committee discussions are also likely to touch on elements such as EU enlargement and the financing of environmental and social protections. “This is particularly necessary to ensure that, in future, other countries such as Ukraine, can join the European Union and that both the EU and the acceding countries can benefit from the common market,” she said.
In addition, Vrecionová also expected that the EU will be able to finalise negotiations over the regulation of new genomic techniques (NGT) — a controversial file put forward by the commission last year that has still not found common ground among EU member states.
Vrecionová, who was one of the lead negotiators on this file during the previous legislative term, has argued that plant breeding is the most important economic and environmental investment in agriculture.
“The more tools put to use in plant breeding, the better we will be able to address societal challenges such as the need to reduce the amount of inputs for agricultural production, while at the same time tackling the growing challenge posed by pests. All this is necessary to ensure stable and higher yields,” she said.
Meanwhile, environmental and anti-lobbyist campaigners have slammed the European Commission proposal as an attempt to deregulate GMO techniques, putting consumers' rights and the rights of the non-GM sector at risk.
NGTs are crops made by new techniques like CRISPR-Cas. But political pressure to change current rules for GMOs has been mounting since 2018 — when the European Court of Justice ruled that new techniques like CRISPR-Cas still fall under the current framework dealing with genetic-engineering products.
The AGRI coordinators are: Herbert Dorfmann (EPP, Italy), Dario Nardella (S&D, Italy), Raffaele Stancanelli (PfE, Italy), Carlo Fidanza (ECR, Italy), Elsi Katainen (Renew Europe, Finland), Thomas Waitz (Greens, Germany), Luke Ming Flanagan (The Left, Ireland) and Ivan David (ESN, Czech Republic).
Elena is EUobserver's Managing Editor. She is from Spain and has studied journalism and new media in Spanish and Belgian universities. Previously she worked on European affairs at VoteWatch Europe and the Spanish news agency EFE.
Elena is EUobserver's Managing Editor. She is from Spain and has studied journalism and new media in Spanish and Belgian universities. Previously she worked on European affairs at VoteWatch Europe and the Spanish news agency EFE.