The European farming community is dismayed and greatly concerned this morning by the agreement reached by negotiators in trilogue on Nature Restoration yesterday evening. Despite a few mitigations, the overall final compromise reverts to a totally unrealistic proposal for farmers and forest-owners. Worse still, by reintroducing agricultural ecosystems into the proposal, absent from his negotiating mandate, lead negotiator César Luena (S&D, ES) tried his hand at poker, forcing the Parliament to reposition itself on the whole proposal.
One thing is certain this morning: the agreement reached late yesterday evening by the institutional negotiators on the restoration of nature will rekindle the heated debate in Brussels. By reintroducing Article 9 on agricultural ecosystems, the negotiators decided to return many unrealistic and unbudgeted provisions to the centre of the regulation that will take their toll on Europe’s farmers and foresters. Aware of the gap between the ambitions of the text and the absent compensatory measures, the negotiators agreed to the “emergency break” for 2033 in agriculture, thus acknowledging that this will have serious repercussions for the food producing sectors.
Adding today’s proposals on nature restoration to the other Farm to Fork provisions, and the equation quickly becomes untenable in the field. By not respecting his negotiating position, rapporteur César Luena is pushing all MEPs to reposition themselves on this text. No MEP can now say that the text proposed for ratification will not have major impacts on our production, our competitiveness, the EU trade balance, or the consumption price for millions of Europeans!
Fonte: Copa Cogeca
