As of: March 14, 2024, 5:48 p.m
By: Ulrike Hagen
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The European Commission is bowing to farmers' protests and backtracking on organic requirements.
Environmental standards should be lifted.
Environmental experts are horrified.
Brussels - The EU this week announced a series of legislative proposals that will significantly weaken environmental regulations for farmers.
In doing so, it bows to the ongoing farmers' protests - and in doing so contradicts the alarming climate advice of its own scientists, also published in the last few days, that agriculture urgently needs to become more sustainable because "climate risks have already reached a critical level and will be catastrophic without urgent and decisive action." can assume “dimensions”.
The European Commission plans to lift environmental standards, such as land to promote biodiversity and minimizing tillage to prevent soil erosion.
© Dave Reede/imago/Symbolbild
After farmers' protests: EU Commission initiates “measures to reduce bureaucracy”.
The document published on Tuesday (March 12) by the European Commission provides for changes to the standard of “good agricultural and ecological conditions” in a total of four measures, which, among other things, specify a minimum proportion of fallow land on arable land.
This means that farmers in Germany will also be released from a series of environmental protection standards to defuse the climate crisis, which should, among other things, minimize soil erosion and preserve biological diversity.
Lobby prevails: EU is rowing back on organic regulation of agriculture
The EU's agricultural policy originally stipulated that farmers had to meet certain environmental requirements in order to receive EU subsidies, which consumed an immense third of the EU budget.
According to the published paper, the EU executive will now propose to scrap four of these requirements and instead provide “financial compensation” to farmers who voluntarily comply with them.
These standards for “good agricultural and ecological conditions” (GAEC) are now to be deleted:
GLÖZ 5 - Farmers must minimize tillage to prevent soil erosion.
GAEC 6 - Requiring farmers to grow cover crops between seasons to conserve soil, water and nutrients, thereby reducing the need for chemicals such as fertilizers.
GAEC 7 - Obligation of farmers to grow different types of crops on the same area over several growing seasons.
This helps return nutrients to the soil without synthetic inputs and reduces the need for chemical pesticides.
GLÖZ 8 - Obligation of farmers to reserve at least 4 percent of their cultivated areas for biological diversity.
The Commission argues in the draft that farmers will be able to achieve environmental goals in a more “realistic” way.
The Commission's move was sharply criticized by environmental organizations and the Working Group for Rural Agriculture (AbL);
They warn that the move would undo what little environmental reform has been incorporated into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in recent years.
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European Environment Agency: Europe unprepared for rapidly growing climate risks
Just this Monday (March 11), an alarming report from scientists at the European Environment Agency (EEA) was published, naming agriculture as a sector in need of urgent action if the continent is to avoid catastrophic floods, years-long droughts and scorching heatwaves.
In it, the EEA calls on the EU to ensure sustainable food production and stated that "reducing pollution from agricultural and industrial activities should be a priority for protecting Europe's ecosystems in the face of climate change."
Undoing decades of progress toward sustainable agriculture for short-term electoral reasons is a big mistake for which society as a whole will pay a high price.
Marco Contiero, EU Agriculture Commissioner, Greenpeace
“The last shred of environmental protection has been removed from EU agricultural policy”: environmentalists horrified
But apparently the agricultural lobby has the upper hand.
Marco Contiero, Greenpeace's EU agriculture representative in Brussels, is concerned about the measure proposed by the European Commission in response to farmers' protests: "Farmers are in dire straits, but these proposals do little to help "To fix these, but only remove some of the last shreds of environmental protection in EU agricultural policy," Contiero told
IPPEN.MEDIA
.
Ruling out decades of progress towards sustainable agriculture for short-term electoral reasons before the upcoming European elections is a big mistake for which society as a whole will pay a high price.
"The Commission is once again beating the drum of 'farmers against nature', a sham battle that distracts from the real causes of farmers' problems and, in the long run, worsens their situation."
Nature conservation associations alarmed: “Status quo offers no prospects for the future”
Jörg-Andreas Krüger, President of the
German Nature Conservation Association (
NABU), asks: “Is it still fair if we continue to subsidize a clearly sick system from which only a few benefit and in the end society bears the consequences?”
Reducing bureaucracy should be about sensible reorganization of administrative processes.
“This is exactly what Brussels and Berlin are avoiding, despite the farmers’ protests and the urgency they express,” he explains in a statement.
Is it still fair if we continue to subsidize a clearly sick system from which only a few benefit and society ultimately bears the consequences?
Jörg-Andreas Krüger, NABU President
Unfair pseudo-solutions would not help anyone: “Not only us, but also science has been saying for a long time that things have to be different and that the status quo offers no prospects for the future.
Where is the claim that politics should serve everyone?”
The Council and the European Parliament now have two months to examine the legal text submitted.
Within this period, the co-legislators can veto the European Commission's plans.
If they do not do this, the legal act comes into force.
Changes to this are then not possible.
The new regulation is to come into force retroactively to January 1, 2024 and in every member state.