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Quoted By: >>1277572
The European Commission’s move to slash environmental requirements for farmers comes as top scientists are urging just the opposite.
The European Commission is finalizing a series of legislative proposals that would severely weaken environmental requirements for farmers — flying in the face of advice by its top scientists that agriculture must become more sustainable or it will be decimated by climate change.
The proposals, seen by POLITICO, would end a requirement to set aside land to promote biodiversity, making it and other measures — such as minimizing tillage to prevent soil erosion — voluntary. Taken together, they would enable farmers to get EU subsidies even if they don't meet the most basic environmental standards, known as conditionality.
The dramatic policy reversal by Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission comes at the urging of national governments desperate to quell protests by farmers who have taken to the streets around Europe, and in Brussels, to vent their fury at the environmental red tape they say is destroying their livelihoods.
But it also ignores a stark warning by the EU’s own scientists, in a first-of-its-kind report this week by the European Environment Agency, which singles out agriculture as a sector where urgent action is needed if the Continent is to avoid catastrophic floods, years-long droughts and scorching heatwaves.
Civil society groups and green lawmakers warn that the push would undo what little environmental reform has been added in recent years to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the EU farm subsidy program that eats up a third of the bloc’s budget, locking taxpayers' money into subsidizing farmers to maintain the status quo for years to come.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-takes-the-ax-to-green-farming-rules/
The European Commission is finalizing a series of legislative proposals that would severely weaken environmental requirements for farmers — flying in the face of advice by its top scientists that agriculture must become more sustainable or it will be decimated by climate change.
The proposals, seen by POLITICO, would end a requirement to set aside land to promote biodiversity, making it and other measures — such as minimizing tillage to prevent soil erosion — voluntary. Taken together, they would enable farmers to get EU subsidies even if they don't meet the most basic environmental standards, known as conditionality.
The dramatic policy reversal by Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission comes at the urging of national governments desperate to quell protests by farmers who have taken to the streets around Europe, and in Brussels, to vent their fury at the environmental red tape they say is destroying their livelihoods.
But it also ignores a stark warning by the EU’s own scientists, in a first-of-its-kind report this week by the European Environment Agency, which singles out agriculture as a sector where urgent action is needed if the Continent is to avoid catastrophic floods, years-long droughts and scorching heatwaves.
Civil society groups and green lawmakers warn that the push would undo what little environmental reform has been added in recent years to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the EU farm subsidy program that eats up a third of the bloc’s budget, locking taxpayers' money into subsidizing farmers to maintain the status quo for years to come.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-takes-the-ax-to-green-farming-rules/
