Brussels 23 May 2025, Extreme weather events, like droughts, cost European agricultural production more than €28 billion annually. The European food and agriculture system is long overdue a just agroecological transition that puts resilience and constructively contributing to achieving ambitious climate targets front and center. The ministers in the AGRIFISH Council have a chance to raise this ambition when debating the European Commission’s proposed ‘Vision for Agriculture and Food’ on 26 May.
Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe is calling on ministers present in the debate to stand up for the need to ensure that the European agriculture and food system become more sustainable and resilient to the challenges of the climate crisis. The pattern of droughts continues in 2025, with early projections indicating this could worsen in the coming weeks – putting farming conditions and water availability under severe stress. The impact this will have on people and nature will be severe.
As part of the upcoming 2040 climate target for domestic reductions, governments should work towards a binding agriculture sectoral goal. This goal must be underpinned by appropriate financing that moves away from financing primarily large farms that are particularly high contributors to the sector’s harmful climate emissions.
Furthermore, the CAP simplification proposal and its impact assessment presented by the European Commission last week also fail to provide clear evidence that the steps suggested would not undermine the EU’s environmental and climate objectives.
“While some simplifications, for example for organic farming, may reduce the administrative efforts for the farmers, other proposals are estimated to have a negative effect on the sector’s environmental and climate performance, such as allowing to convert 10% instead of 5% of grassland for more intense agricultural use” said Sven Harmeling, Head of Climate at CAN Europe. “Removing the links between the CAP and more recently adopted environmental and climate legislation risks resulting in increasing policy incoherence and inefficiencies on the way to climate neutrality. This needs to be corrected by ministers.”
Ministers have the opportunity to take ambitious steps towards a policy framework that ensures emission reductions across the food chain as an all-actor task: This is a strategy that would ensure a just transition to a more resilient and sustainable EU livestock sector, ensuring fair prices for farmers and consumers and to promote the application of the polluter pays principle.
ENDS
Notes to the editor:
- Letter to ministers outlining CAN Europe’s views on the Vision for Agriculture and Food ahead of the AGRIFISH Council on May 26, 2025
- CAN Europe Position Paper on the “Vision for Agriculture and Food”
