EU Commission proposes package to defuse farmers’ anger

In the face of growing protests by farmers, the European Commission officially proposed on Wednesday (31 January) introducing safeguard measures to cap Ukrainian food imports and accepted France’s proposal for a partial derogation from the fallow-land obligations for farmers.

The measures are an attempt to meet at least some of the demands by European farmers, who have been protesting all over Europe since the end of 2023.

The first measure relates to imports of Ukrainian products into the EU, which have been free of customs duties and quotas since 2022 to help Ukraine overcome the trade difficulties caused by Russia’s aggression.

At a press conference, the Commission announced that “a broad consensus” had been reached to maintain these autonomous trade measures (ATMs) for a further year, until June 2025, with support for Ukraine remaining “necessary”.

However, in view of the significant increase in imports of certain products such as poultry and sugar, the Commission is proposing “a reinforced safeguard mechanism” so that “corrective measures” can be taken quickly in the event of “harmful effects” for one or more member states.

Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania – the front line countries due to their proximity to Ukraine –  have been putting pressure on the Commission for several weeks to implement protective measures.

Between 2022 and 2023, EU imports from Ukraine have risen by 50% for poultry, 130% for eggs and 1000% for sugar.

The autonomous trade measures in place already provide a system of checks and controls on the Ukrainian side to avoid any distortion of the single market, without any real effectiveness according to these countries.

To protect “sensitive products” such as sugar and poultry, the Commission also proposed establishing a threshold for imports on the basis of the average level for 2022-23. Overcoming these would trigger the activation of an emergency brake, and reintroduction of customs duties.

Although the European executive will have the final say, it has indicated that the member states will be able to express their opinions during a “consultative procedure”.

However, according to a six-organisations coalition led by Copa and Cogeca and representing cereals, oil seeds, poultry, eggs, and sugar sectors, the measure will not “provide sufficient relief”.

The EU institutions, a joint press release reads, “must find a workable compromise and a constructive solution to maintain trade flows, protect EU producers, help Ukrainian producers to diversify their exports”, and “re-establish old trading routes and limit their dependency to the EU market”.

The Federation of Employers of Ukraine, for its part, welcomed “the decision of the European Commission” but disagreed with the proposal “of measures for the so-called automatic blocking of exports of three groups of goods”.

According to the Ukrainians, “exports of eggs, sugar, and chicken meat [from Kyiv] pose no threat to the European market, and even play a stabilising role”.

Abandoning set-aside, a controversial measure

In addition, the European Commission is proposing a new derogation from the requirement for large farms to maintain 4% fallow-land, as laid down in the new Common Agricultural Policy, fully entered into force in January 2023.

The requirement is part of the environmental obligations farmers must comply with to have access to support from the EU’s Common Agricutural Policy.

Last week, Romanian farmers urged their Agriculture Minister Florin Barbu to call for the resignation of the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, if the derogations on crop rotation and set-aside were rejected.

The Commission is now proposing a partial derogation from the set-aside rules in 2024, taking up a proposal that France has been putting forward to the Council for several months, along with 22 other countries.

The Commission is proposing to maintain 7% of land favourable to biodiversity (without pesticides) with intermediate or nitrogen-fixing crops (lentils, weights, etc.) to keep the compliance with the set-aside obligation.

“Months of work by France, a coalition built patiently with all our European colleagues, whom I would like to thank, and a simple, pragmatic solution that combines transition and production,” French Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau announced on X on Wednesday.

This proposal, which aims to increase production and hence farmers’ incomes, is nonetheless controversial.

According to a recent study, “a reduction in set-aside areas in the EU would have only a minor effect on the price of cereals on the world market”, as set-aside land is generally not very fertile.

Other critics point to the very relative results of derogations over the last two years. In Austria, only 0.6% of the land covered by a derogation was used to produce cereals for human consumption, but exclusively for animal feed, according to another study.

“Increasing production on non-productive land is unlikely to boost production but if it ever did, it would only lower prices in an oversaturated market, driving farmers income down further,” Marilda Dhaskali, BirdLife’s European agricultural policy officer, said in a statement.

Copa and Cogeca, the main European farm unions association, welcomed this announcement, but said it “comes late in the agricultural calendar and remains limited”. The EU farmers organisations called on member states to push the Commission to go further with CAP derogations at Thursday’s European Council.

[edited by Angelo Di Mambro and Zoran Radosavljevic]

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