AM State Secretary: a competitive, crisis-proof and farmer-friendly EU agricultural policy is needed

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Zsolt Feldman “Green requirements in EU agricultural regulation – What direction can the Common Agricultural Policy take?” in his presentation, he highlighted: the government wants to achieve results under the EU presidency by grouping them around 4 major themes. These are the support distribution system, green issues, risk management, and crisis measures. There will be many and intensive dialogues about all of them within the EU in the next period, but in terms of the results, much will depend on the new European Parliament and European Commission established after the EU elections, he added. “In Brussels, change is also needed in this sense, because the previous system of relations with agriculture was insufficient from the point of view of the actors of agriculture and the countryside, and even hostile in many ways,” he said.

The state secretary reminded: it is not only the instrument system of the common agricultural policy (CAP) that influences and constrains EU agriculture

The “starting to politicize” European Commission put a program on the table in 2019, which since then has essentially failed from a professional point of view: the new plant protection regulations, the nature restoration plan have bled, and roughly what remains is what was added to the rules of the common agricultural policy in 2021 by the European Parliament he was able to pack under pressure,” he said. In the meantime, it became obvious that this violent solution would not lead to results, therefore the political representation of the community’s agriculture on the EU scene will be important in the next period – he emphasized, noting that to achieve even small results, extensive farmer demonstrations across Europe were necessary. Accordingly, the Hungarian government will take over the EU presidency with the aim of showing a clear, farmer-friendly direction for agricultural regulation from the European Council to the European Commission, which – according to the current situation – will prepare the legislative proposals necessary for the negotiations by the summer of 2025 – announced Zsolt Feldman. According to his words, the green transition has its place in this, but it should not be enforced with sanctions, prohibitions and punishments, but rather with incentives and “meaningful persuasion” to support and promote it. This process makes sense if the actors in it are partners, not seen as enemies – he noted, adding: the Hungarian government is working for such a common agricultural policy and wants to build such an agricultural model for the period after 2027, which it is looking for and apparently increasingly finding. allies on the European scene.

MTI