It’s no secret that farmers across the EU are increasingly frustrated with the state of their industry. Profitability is falling, foreign competition is fierce and concerns about paperwork and bureaucracy continue to rise. Fewer and fewer young people are taking charge of the family farm and opting for other careers. In addition to these long-standing challenges, the war in Iran is adding new pressures, particularly with rising fertilizer costs. We sat down to discuss these issues with the EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen.
“The war going on in the Middle East is having a huge impact on our economy,” Hansen tells us. “We have trade flows through these routes. We depend on imports from there for oil and LNG (liquefied natural gas). But fertilizers also pass through the affected region. The (fertilizer) production sites are paralyzed. This creates problems for the agricultural sector. And in general, our economy will have problems to cope with the situation.”
For Hansen, the war highlights the EU’s vulnerability when it comes to supply chains. “One of our weaknesses is that we depend heavily on imports from third countries, for fertilizers and energy,” says Hansen. “Fertilizer prices have increased by 60% since 2020. This was already making grain producers really nervous. This is not a sustainable situation. We need to find solutions. We have agricultural reserves, but of course this is not enough. Therefore, we have to find other possibilities to help farmers cope with this situation.”
We asked Hansen whether the Commission has made a risky political gamble by provisionally applying the controversial EU-Mercosur trade deal (with Latin American countries), despite opposition from farmers, unions and MEPs in the EU Parliament.
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that a trade agreement has been provisionally applied,” Hansen responds. “There are precedents for that. And there was a very clear mandate from the (EU) Council for this provisional application. Parliament decided not to immediately vote on consent. Of course, it is free to do so.” Hansen insists that “many sectors really want this agreement. The wine and spirits sector; the dairy sector; the olive oil sector; the ham sector in Italy and Spain too. This is the economic reality.”
Christophe Hansen insists that the Commission’s simplification agenda does not mean relaxing environmental standards in agriculture, especially when it comes to pesticides. This is despite the major concerns raised by entities such as the European Environment Office and the European Pesticides Action Network.
“Product approval is currently a very long procedure that, unfortunately, blocks, for example, the marketing of new biopesticides that are low-risk substances. These (new products) have the same approval time: 7, 8 or 10 years. This is too slow. And when I talk to the manufacturers of these new alternatives to classic chemicals, they tell me: ‘well, we are going to move to the United States’. We finance the research, and then they go somewhere else because our procedures are too slow. That has to change. Otherwise, we will no longer be competitive with anyone in the world.
