“Now is not the time to jeopardize Europe’s food security.” One year before the European elections, the European People’s Party (EPP), the leading political force in the Strasbourg Parliament, has decided to scrap against the ecological transition strategy supported by the Commission and its president, Ursula von der Leyen. The elected representatives of the European right adopted on May 5 A resolution hostile to a draft legislation which should make it possible, by 2030, to reduce the use of pesticides by 50% within the EU. “The chosen reduction targets are simply not achievable and the proposal does not offer viable alternatives to farmers,” they write.
The debate on phytosanitary products, and by extension on the European Union’s food sovereignty, is therefore resurfacing. As soon as the agricultural component of the Green Pact was presented in 2021, Copa-Cogeca, the main representative of farmers and cooperatives, stood against “a political objective devoid of a scientific basis” which would push imports. Last December, the Twenty-Seven asked the Commission to provide an additional study on the effects of such a policy. “There is a Commission and a Parliament which tell us that to save the planet, we must stop producing, and then there is a part of the agricultural world which recognizes the efforts to be made, but which wishes to bet on the agriculture of precision and innovation”, explains Anne Sander, EPP MEP.
Win back a rural electorate
“No one disputes that we must improve practices, but a balance must be found between the need to produce and the treatment of our crops”, supports Christiane Lambert, former president of Copa and former president of the FNSEA. In fact, on a European scale, the top four agricultural producers are also the largest purchasers of phytosanitary products.
On April 26, the European Environment Agency published a report emphasizing the importance of chemical pesticides in European agricultural production: 350,000 tonnes per year, a stable figure. This use contributes to the decline of insect populations, whose role in food production is central. The Agency thus underlined that “future crop losses linked to the decline of pollinators could reduce human consumption of certain food groups such as fruits, vegetables and nuts”.
This is not the first time that the EPP has attacked EU environmental policy. The reform of the Union’s carbon market and that of the regulation on chemical substances had also been singled out. Positions that annoy Pascal Canfin, MEP (Renaissance) and President of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee, for whom the argument of agricultural sovereignty does not hold. “The EPP is becoming radicalized and is placing itself in a logic of political rupture against an important element of von der Leyen’s legacy: the Green Deal.” A maneuver, believes the former Green, which aims first to win back a rural electorate tempted by the far right.