BRUSSELS — Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski has secretly written a controversial and unsolicited draft law on food security, which ignores the EU’s legislative process and directly contradicts EU climate and environmental policy, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO.
The so-called “directive on the protection of agricultural activities” is not part of the European Commission’s legislative agenda and has taken the institution by surprise. Given Wojciechowski’s impending replacement, it appears to be the Polish commissioner’s latest — and final — attempt at leaving a positive legacy to EU farmers.
“This document was drafted by Commissioner Wojciechowski in a personal capacity. No Commission services have been involved in its drafting,” said Olof Gill, a Commission spokesperson, in response to an inquiry by POLITICO about the typo-ridden four-page document.
It isn’t the first time that Wojciechowski — widely seen as a lame duck ahead of the appointment of a new team by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — has acted out.
Last month, he published an unexpected report trumpeting “the most important activities and accomplishments during my time in office,” citing an illegal ban by Central European countries last year on Ukrainian agri-imports as “an important personal achievement.”
Before that, in March, the conservative politician was reprimanded by the Commission for spontaneously announcing major changes to the European Green Deal, which he said was responsible for much of the pain felt by farmers who have protested across Europe this year.
Not again …
This week’s missive is likely to have the Berlaymont groaning once more.
EU legislation starts with lengthy impact assessments and consultations with stakeholders, followed by careful writing and re-writing by experts within the relevant department (in this case DG AGRI). Documents reach dozens of pages, with lawyers scrutinizing every subclause for clarity and precision.
The draft obtained by POLITICO is practically a memo and could largely have been written by Europe’s powerful farmer lobbies. Besides a few provisions for small-scale producers, the text throws red meat to big agricultural associations, buying into their narrative that Brussels must slash environmental regulation to ensure food security, and proposing a mishmash of unrelated financial and legal privileges.
Warning of “serious threats to the security of food supply in the long term,” the paper begins by declaring that EU environmental and climate policies may “increase risks to agricultural production” and should be scaled back.
It then calls for farmers to “be free of taxes”; for them to have the right to sell their products directly to consumers (which they already have); for them to receive a dispensation to keep unregistered livestock; and for them to be protected from pesky environmental officials and greedy food companies by a special “Farmers’ Ombudsman.”
Unwelcome surprise
The draft has met so far with mixed reactions, ranging from bemusement to derision.
“We understood that the Commissioner had in mind the publication of a strategy on food security and wanted to express his recommendations for the upcoming mandate,” said Peter Meedendorp, president of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA).
However, “the form is somewhat surprising to us,” he told POLITICO.
The timing, Meedendorp said, also “risks colliding with the publication of the final report of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of Agriculture,” a multi-month consultation convened by von der Leyen between farmers, food manufacturers, and green NGOs that is due to wrap up its deliberations this week.
Meedendorp, who is taking part in the strategic dialogue, did at least welcome the Polish commissioner’s “focus on young farmers, land use” and preventing price-gouging.
Olivier De Schutter, co-chair at the International Panel of Experts for Sustainable Food Systems (IPES), said that while some of the proposals were interesting, particularly “as they seek to protect small-scale food producers from excessive buyer power, the whole document is based on the wrong premise — namely, that farmers’ livelihoods and environmental objectives such as soil health and biodiversity are conflicting.”
“They are not,” said De Schutter, who was the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the right to food from 2008 to 2014. “[N]o scientist would endorse the view that long-term food security depends on removing environmental conditionalities imposed on farmers … [r]egrettably, the paper by Commissioner Wojciechowski is based on political calculation rather than on sound scientific expertise.”
The most troubling element, according to Dutch academic Jeroen Candel, is how the document pushes a twisted conception of food security, which “has nothing to do with food security challenges in a real sense, and everything with food security discourse aimed at maintaining the current agricultural system.”
“This is simply ridiculous,” he concluded, and “[s]elling this as necessary for food security is just bollocks.”
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