BRUSSELS, (Belgium): The EU plans to crackdown on food imports that do not meet its standards as part of an agricultural policy review published Wednesday that looks to appease disgruntled farmers amid global trade tensions.
The European Commission unveiled a new blueprint for a sector that despite gobbling up a third of the bloc’s budget has long resented Brussels’ liberal approach to trade.
Months of protests last year saw farmers irked at regulatory burdens, squeezed revenues and what they see as unfair competition from less-regulated overseas rivals, hurling eggs, spraying manure and blocking the Belgian capital’s streets.
The “Vision for Agriculture and Food” is “a strong response to that call for help,” the commission’s vice-president for reforms Raffaele Fitto told a press conference referring to the protests.
To ensure that the agricultural sector is not “put at a competitive disadvantage”, the commission will pursue “a stronger alignment of production standards applied to imported products,” the text reads.
In particular, Brussels will see to it that “the most hazardous pesticides banned in the EU for health and environmental reasons” are not allowed back in “through imported products”.
Europe already bans food imports that exceed residue limits for some pesticides EU farmers can’t use over food safety concerns.
The new approach seeks to extend restrictions to production standards, EU officials explained.
“Our farmers suffer crop losses because they no longer use these pesticides” but competitors in other countries do not, Christophe Hansen, the bloc’s commissioner for agriculture said in an interview, describing the outcome of that as “unfair competition”.
The roadmap, which follows consultations with farming lobby groups and environmental NGOs, does not specify what products or countries could be affected.
An impact assessment will inform possible “amendments to the applicable legal framework”, it says.
A “dedicated task force” will also be established to strengthen food safety import controls.
The prospect of import restrictions could ruffle feathers abroad against the backdrop of a looming trade conflict.
“Obviously, we can say that it is a barrier to trade. That’s how some third countries will interpret it,” Hansen said.
The Financial Times reported this week US crops such as soybeans could be targeted, after President Donald Trump unveiled duties that could hit European exports.
European farmers have also been uneasy at a trade deal with Latin America’s Mercosur bloc the commission announced in December.
The document also vows to reform the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP), cutting red tape and better targeting mammoth subsidies towards farmers “who need it most”.
This suggests Brussels will move away from the current system, which calculates financial aid based on the size of the farms, favouring large landowners.
“It’s a paradigm shift,” said Celia Nyssens-James of the European Environment Bureau, an umbrella group of activists, noting that the lion’s share of money is now going to a minority of farmers who don’t “necessarily need it”.
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