Agrifood Brief

EURACTIV's agrifood team brings you the latest from Strasbourg where MEPs voted their position on two important files for the future of the EU’s agriculture: the industrial emissions directive and the nature restoration law. We take a deep dive into the latter along with EURACTIV’s very own energy and environment reporter Kira Taylor and Olliver Moore, editor-in-chief of ARC2020.

This week, EURACTIV talks you through everything you need to know on the presentation of the Commission’s ‘sustainable use of natural resources’, and EURACTIV’s Natasha Foote talks with Vice President Frans Timmermans about his message to farmers amid rising tensions over the EU’s nature restoration plans and his vision for the future structure of the institutions dealing with food policy.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team debriefs the agriculture ministers' meeting in Luxembourg and looks ahead at the "Food and Biodiversity Package," a set of legislative proposals expected from the European Commission on Wednesday. Over in New York, Gerardo Fortuna spoke to Bayer’s Rodrigo Santos and Axel Trautwein about regenerative agriculture and different regulatory approaches to agricultural policies.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team talks you through the leaked draft of one of the most contentious proposals from the European Commission in the past months: gene editing. EURACTIV's Paula Andres talks to Mette Uldahl, Vice President of the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, about the state of animal welfare in EU farms and what is lacking.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team brings you an exclusive interview with Spain’s agriculture minister, Luis Planas, who details the country’s agricultural priorities ahead of the Spanish presidency starting in July. We also talk you through a leak of an additional Commission study on the EU’s plans to slash the use and risk of pesticides in half by 2030, which was requested by EU member states, and last week’s confusion over the Parliamentary vote on the EU’s nature restoration law.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team talks you through the EU's decision to extend trade restrictions on select agricultural commodities coming from Ukraine and why this has proven controversial on both sides, and Gerardo Fortuna, together with EURACTIV's very own Transport Editor Sean Goulding, speaks with Indonesia's coordinating minister for economic affairs, Airlangga Hartanto, about palm oil. 

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team talks you through the controversies at a recent meeting of EU agriculture ministers, including how the EU’s agriculture Commissioner is increasingly prioritising Polish issues, and discusses the pushback to the EU’s nature restoration law, both within the institution and around it. EURACTIV’s Julia Dahm also speaks to Annette Schneegans and Kerstin Rosenow from the Commission’s DG AGRI about the EU’s upcoming soil health law.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team walks you through two key votes in the European Parliament on the nature restoration law and EU rules to slash industrial emissions and EURACTIV’s Natasha Foote speaks with Helmut Burtscher-Schaden from the Austrian environmental NGO GLOBAL 2000 about how the environmental exemptions in the CAP, which were taken to help boost food production, failed to live up to their promises.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team brings you to a young farmers' conference discussing sustainability in agriculture, where EURACTIV also spoke to EU's Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans. EURACTIV's Julia Dahm walks you through the potential voluntary animal welfare labelling system in the context of the upcoming revision of the Commission's animal welfare rules.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team brings you all you need to know on the centre-right's attack on the agricultural parts of the EU Green Deal, including the EU's plans to slash the use and risk of pesticides and the EU's nature restoration law, and EURACTIV's Natasha Foote speaks to liberal MEP and chair of the European Parliament's environment committee, Pascal Canfin, to hear his take on the development.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team tells the story of a Portuguese delicacy that has a strong, unsuspecting link with a foundational moment of the EU’s integration process. We also spoke with French liberal MEP Irène Tolleret about a proposal filed by a coalition of EU lawmakers to proclaim 2024 as the European Year devoted to ‘sustainable and resilient food systems’.