MOF, Alm.del - 2021-22 - Bilag 325: Invitation fra det Det franske senat til interparlamentarisk konference om EU’s økonomiske suverænitet, hvor undertemaerne er industrier, fødevarer og energi den 13. og 14. marts 2022

Miljø- og Fødevareudvalget 2021-22
MOF Alm.del Bilag 325
Offentligt

Background note

Session 3

The challenges of European food sovereignty

With a keynote speech of Mr Norbert Lins, chairman of the European

Parliament Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development

Interparliamentary Conference on the strategic economic autonomy of

the European Union

Paris, 14 March 2022

MOF, Alm.del - 2021-22 - Bilag 325: Invitation fra det Det franske senat til interparlamentarisk konference om EU’s økonomiske suverænitet, hvor undertemaerne er industrier, fødevarer og energi den 13. og 14. marts 2022

Session 3

The challenges of European food sovereignty

The European Union’s food sovereignty has been of geo-strategic

importance for the Member States ever since the introduction of the

Common Agricultural Policy by the founding fathers.

Since then, the European Union, thanks to a solid self-sufficiency in food

production, has remained the world’s leading agricultural and food exporting

power, with a positive trade balance of around twenty billion euros.

The issue of food sovereignty has come to the fore once again through the

prism of environmental requirements, which are considered a condition of the

sustainability of an agricultural model and not an obstacle to it. By allowing a

reduction in the transport of foodstuffs in favour of more local food production

popular with consumers and citizens, whilst guaranteeing compliance with the

minimum environmental requirements applicable in Europe, which are the

strictest in the world, food sovereignty is a response to the need to reduce the

environmental footprint of the European consumer’s shopping basket.

However, the continent’s food sovereignty is today confronted with four

underlying trends:

•

stability of its total agricultural production in a context of world population

growth, which is the result of the reduction of its agricultural production

potential (renewal of generations, artificialisation of soils, etc.) and a

slowdown in agricultural productivity;

growth of imports from third countries, combined with a multiplication of

export crises, notably with the retaliation measures taken by Russia or

the United States;

citizens’ growing mistrust, particularly concerning the food industry, with

regard to the effects of international trade due to a lack of compliance

•

•

with Europe’s health and environmental regulations by its trade partners,

which reduces the competitiveness of the European agri-food industry at

the risk of leading to its inevitable decline;

•

a re-localisation of food production demanded by consumers which

translates into particular attention being paid to the origin of food

products. Although this should increase convergence between European

agricultural models, differences in standards create a high level of

intra‑European competition within different sectors of the industry. At the

same time, origin labelling is banned by European regulations.

The Covid-19 crisis, followed by the sharp rise in agricultural commodity

prices, has finally revealed some areas where the continent is fragile:

for

example, the European Union imports 90% of its vegetable protein needs,

which jeopardises its autonomy even in livestock production.

In this context, does the “Farm to fork” strategy intended to be part of

the European Green Deal not risk jeopardising the continent’s agricultural

sovereignty by prioritising the objective of reducing the environmental

footprint? How can the continent’s position as an agricultural exporter be

reconciled with the requirement for the sovereignty and resilience of

European food production models? How can Europe’s agricultural

potential be consolidated to feed Europe and the world in years to come?