It is a "decisive battle" against the unfair competition of products arriving from third-party nations that do not respect the same health, environmental and social rules that our farmers and fishermen are bound to respect
. For this reason, Italy will be the spokesperson of farmers' requests, will ask the European Commission to negotiate agreements with non-EU countries with greater incisiveness and determination, and establish more stringent rules and also precise reciprocity standards".
Prime Minister
Giorgia Meloni stated this in a video message to the Confagricoltura Assembly in Brussels.
At today's Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels, which "meets to discuss the most effective responses to the crisis affecting the sector", Italy "will be represented by Minister Lollobrigida" and "will come to the table with
a very concrete document, which aims to reiterate some fundamental concepts.
The first of these is that agriculture is not the enemy of the environment and the ecological transition, in fact, it is the exact opposite" specifies the prime minister.
"If there is someone who loves the territory, who wants to protect it and who works every day to preserve it, also protecting identity and traditions, that someone is the farmer - adds Meloni -. For this, the government has fought in Europe since his inauguration against all those ideological diktats that would have affected European agricultural production and would have put at risk the concept of food sovereignty which remains an indispensable direction of ours".
On agriculture in Europe "we have made the Italian voice heard on many dossiers and the orientation has progressively changed. I am thinking of the rules on emissions, packaging, pesticides, forced rotation or compulsory set-aside of land. Of course, not all the issues are resolved, but I really believe that the path forward is clear. And that common sense is starting to prevail."
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni stated this in a video message to the Confagricoltura Assembly in Brussels.
A "priority that we are called to address is the revision of the common agricultural policy.
The CAP with which we are dealing was imagined before the pandemic and before the conflict in Ukraine, in a world completely different from the current one. And so we need a reform of the structure we have inherited, so that the CAP returns to pursuing those strategic objectives of an economic and social nature that were envisaged by the European treaties: on the one hand guaranteeing security in supplies of quality food to our citizens, on the other ensuring adequate standard of living for those who produce that food" says the prime minister.
According to the Prime Minister, these objectives "can only be achieved by supporting farmers' income".
And "in this context the chapter of controls is fundamental, and at a national level we have been at the forefront from the beginning - adds Meloni -. We have established an inter-force control room, defined an extraordinary control plan for 2024. This will allow us to broaden the spectrum of supply chains subjected to verification and thus increase the number of agents employed in sensitive points, such as the ports of arrival of goods".
"Without farmers there is no food. Without food there is no future. Words that we have often heard said in recent weeks and also read many times on signs and banners. Well, there are those who have said and written that farmers took to the streets to defend their privileges. I believe, however, that
farmers have every right to make their voices heard and ask for what any worker asks for: recognition of the right price for the work they do and a system of rules that defend and support that work.
Would this be a privilege? I believe it is not a privilege, it is a battle of common sense, concrete and real" explains Meloni.
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