Agriculture enters European Council agenda. Meloni: “No more holy war in the name of climate”

Rome – Agriculture will be discussed at the European Council on March 21 and 22, and Giorgia Meloni takes credit for getting the issue on the agenda. She explained in the Senate briefing that she believes it is her duty to intervene in support of a sector that has been “too long forgotten and the object of attention that has not always been benevolent.”

First the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine, have affected food supply chains and “burdened agricultural enterprises with an increase in fixed costs that has further reduced their profitability,” notes the premier. This has been compounded on the one hand by the “bureaucratic burden” introduced by the “greening” measures of the CAP, and on the other, she denounces, by the “ideological overkill” of many of the Green Deal regulations, the Fit for 55 package, and the Farm to Fork strategy. This is how Europe “woke up with tractors in the streets”. However, Meloni claims to lead the government that “has invested the most in agriculture in republican history” (With the reshaping of the NRRP, it has allocated up to €8 billion to the sector).

The Council President once again points the finger at a certain “ideological” view in Brussels on the green transition, which she claims has singled out the farmer, the fisherman, and economic operators who work in contact with nature as “enemies to be targeted in the name of the holy war against climate change.”

What will have to be worked on now, “urgently,” she insists, is the revision of the CAP, which was supported at a time when the context was different: that is, when the shock of the Russian invasion of Ukraine had not yet occurred. The Common Agricultural Policy that was voted on was, in any case, a “mediation with respect to the insane demands of the then Vice-President Timmermans,” lunged the premier, “who wanted a CAP even more unbalanced toward greening measures, so much so that he wanted to include within it the emission reduction targets of the Green Deal.” “Demands,” she comments, which did not materialize then, but which came about later with the definition of eco-schemes and green cross-compliance, and it is “precisely from those that we must start, simplifying procedures as much as possible and retroactively eliminating the 4 per cent set-aside and the crop rotation obligation, which would significantly limit the productivity of our businesses,” she says.

Meloni welcomes the Commission’s recent proposal for a comprehensive review of the CAP: “Now it is important to work quickly on the reform, starting with the next Agriculture and Fisheries Council at the end of March.” Rome is working so that other Italian proposals can find room, such as extending the Temporary Framework for State Aid while still providing for an increase in the de minimis regime and a moratorium on farm debts.

After years of “marginalization” in the most important international fora, “agriculture is back at the centre of Europe,” echoes the Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, recalling the document on the CAP presented at Agrifish in February, in which the criticalities and “mistakes” that Europe has made so far were represented, with indications on a “way to correct it.” For the head of the ministry in Via Venti Settembre, today Europe is beginning to realize that “if agriculture is missing, everything comes down.” Italy’s goal is to “rethink food sovereignty” in Europe: “The challenge of food security is to give good food to everyone, and we cannot achieve it,” he reiterates, “if we do not value those who work every day to ensure the quality of our productions.”