Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development Ordinary meeting
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AGRI European Parliament
Follow its sittingsMaria Walsh
That is why generation renewal is just not an agricultural issue. It's an economic issue, it's imperative, and it's about rural development issue also. To flag what Commissioner Suishka said in the wool debate last Thursday, 80-odd percent of our European Union is rural, and therefore we have to support and develop it continuously, not just through agriculture, but also through regional development.
And ultimately, it's about the future of our EU as a whole. No single policy can achieve this on its own, and no single institution can solve it alone, but we have to start somewhere, and this report is our opportunity to send a very clear message that we believe in our young farmers and we're ready to invest in the next generation through this file as well as into the Common Agriculture Policy and the MFF overall. Over the coming weeks, I look forward to working constructively with all political groups as we prepare compromise amendments. My priority is to build broad agreement while preserving the central ambition of this report, which is to make generational renewal a genuine strategic priority for European agriculture and really build that trust for our young farmers. Technicals begin mid-September, our first shadow I believe at the end of September, so plenty of time for everybody to enjoy their holidays, and then we get back to work in September.
Thanks, Chair.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay, thank you, Madam Rapporteur, and before I give the floor to our shadows, I would like to welcome here the trainees of the Commission in DG AGRI, so dear colleagues, welcome here. And now, as I informed you, we can start with shadow rapporteur. You have two minutes each, and from S&D, I would like to give the floor to Maria Grapini.
Please, the floor is yours, you have two minutes.
Maria Grapini
Mulțumesc, domnule președinte. Vorbesc în numele raportorului André Rodrigues. Mulțumesc, doamnă președinte, mulțumesc raportoarei Maria Walsh pentru munca depusă și pentru abordarea deschisă și constructivă pe care am avut-o pe tot parcursul acestui dosar. Numărul mare de amendamente, așa cum s-a și spus, demonstrează că reînnoirea generațională reprezintă o prioritate comună pentru această comisie. Desigur, există abordări politice diferite, dar există și o înțelegere comună puternică.
Agricultura europeană va avea un viitor doar dacă va reuși să atragă și să păstreze tinerii fermieri. Din perspectiva grupului S&D, amendamentele noastre urmăresc consolidarea raportului în câteva domenii esențiale. În primul rând, reînnoirea generațională nu poate fi redusă doar la sprijinul pentru instalarea tinerilor fermieri.
În al doilea rând, este nevoie de o dimensiune teritorială mai puternică. Tinerii fermieri din insule, din zone montane, din regiuni cu densitate redusă a populației și din regiuni ultraperiferice se confruntă cu constrângeri structurale specifice. De aceea, referitor la articolul 349 din Tratatul privind funcționarea Uniunii Europene și la instrumente precum POSEI sunt importante. În al treilea rând, trebuie abordate aspecte precum accesul la terenuri, concentrarea proprietății funciare, specula funciară, acapararea terenurilor, trebuie rezolvate aceste probleme, precum și dreptul la plată. Aceste drepturi trebuie să sprijine și nu să împiedice reînnoirea generațională.
De asemenea, am depus amendamente referitoare la succesiunea exploatațiilor agricole, pensionarea în condiții demne, egalitatea de gen, reziliența la schimbările climatice, deficitul de apă și dezvoltarea serviciilor în mediul rural. Analizând amendamentele depuse de celelalte grupuri politice, noi observăm premise favorabile pentru compromis, în special în ceea ce privește finanțarea, simplificarea, modele cooperatiste, sănătate mentală, formare profesională. În același timp, acest raport trebuie să rămână concentrat asupra obiectivului său. El nu ar trebui să se transforme într-o dezbatere generală privind întreaga arhitectură a PAC de după 2027. Suntem pregătiți să colaborăm.
Vă mulțumesc, doamna raportor.
Colleagues, I would like to ask you to speak slowly because in any case interpreters cannot interpret you. And now, Patriots, colleague Gilles Pennelle, please, you have two minutes.
Gilles Pennelle
Oui, merci Madame la Présidente. Ce texte va bien évidemment dans le bon sens et les constats de ce rapport montrent une évidence. On ne sauvera pas l'agriculture européenne avec des primes, seulement avec des primes à l'installation, si l'on détruit les conditions économiques du métier. Les jeunes agriculteurs ne demandent pas à vivre de subventions. Ils demandent à vivre de leur travail.
Je le répète parce qu'on ne le dit plus assez, ils demandent de vivre de leur travail. Ils veulent des prix rémunérateurs, une protection contre la concurrence déloyale alors que la Commission de Bruxelles, elle, signe tous les jours un nouveau traité de libre-échange qui les met en difficulté. Ils veulent des normes supportables, un accès au foncier facilité, un accès au crédit et une stabilité réglementaire. Le meilleur moyen d'assurer la continuité du secteur agricole, c'est d'offrir aux jeunes agriculteurs des perspectives de meilleurs revenus.
La France a perdu plus de 100 000 exploitations entre 2010 et 2020, notamment à cause du problème du revenu qui n'attire plus les jeunes dans le métier. Pour retrouver un revenu minimum, il faut stopper les contraintes environnementales du Green Deal et mettre en place une vraie simplification administrative et redonner aux agriculteurs la passion du métier et ne plus les criminaliser. Un agriculteur doit passer plus de temps sur son tracteur que sur son ordinateur parce que c'est le sens de son métier. Et puis, nous, comme nous le réclamons en France, nous demandons d'exonérer de droits de succession sur les transmissions des exploitations agricoles parce que ça, c'est un véritable problème. Bien évidemment, nous trouvons que ce texte va dans le bon sens.
Nous avons déposé bien évidemment des amendements qui reprennent point par point ce que je viens de vous dire. Merci.
Jérémy Decerle
Merci. Merci Madame la Présidente. Je remercie à mon tour bien évidemment Maria Walsh pour son travail et sa bonne coopération avec les différents rapporteurs fictifs. Et puis bien sûr, je la remercie aussi pour cette proposition de rapport qui me semble équilibrée.
On y retrouve les grands principes qui à mon avis doivent être le socle de notre action en faveur du renouvellement des générations. Bien sûr l'accès au foncier et au financement. La transmission aussi intergénérationnelle. Je pense que ce sujet-là doit être aussi grandement partie prenante de notre rapport. L'innovation et la question de la formation.
Et puis aussi le dynamisme des zones rurales. Alors je crois que ce rapport d'initiative doit envoyer un message clair à la Commission, au Conseil et puis finalement à tout le sérail agricole, j'allais dire le monde agricole, pour redire que le Parlement souhaite lui aussi que le renouvellement des générations soit une priorité. Rappeler aussi que pour que ce rapport finalement soit efficace, il faut qu'il trouve écho dans les différents textes réglementaires que nous sommes en train de discuter. Bien sûr le budget, le PPNR et puis la PAC et l'organisation commune de marché. C'est transversal le renouvellement des générations et donc dans ces thématiques-là, sur ces textes-là oh combien importants, je crois que les messages que nous ferons passer dans ce rapport devront aussi s'y trouver.
Et puis redire aussi sur les quelques amendements que Renew a déposé, on redemande aussi un soutien budgétaire affirmé et renforcé dans la PAC à hauteur de 10 %. On demande aussi bien sûr la simplification des contraintes, que ce soit sur le foncier ou la complexité administrative qui sont aussi des freins à l'installation. Et puis bien sûr nous redemandons aussi que les zones rurales soient plus dynamiques pour attirer davantage les jeunes. Et juste pour terminer, je crois que sur ce sujet-là encore une fois nous devons être sérieux et ambitieux et pour ça nous devons faire confiance aussi à nos organisations de jeunes et notamment le Conseil européen des jeunes agriculteurs. Merci.
Thank you. Greens, Thomas Waitz. No, okay.
Oh, I'm sorry, Cristina Guarda.
Cristina Guarda
Thank you, Chair, don't worry. Deeply don't worry. I'm speaking on behalf of my colleague Peer and I will continue in Italian.
Anzitutto vorrei portare l'apprezzamento e il ringraziamento anche del collega Parr alla collega Walsh, in particolar modo per quanto riguarda l'attenzione che ha avuto riguardo alla tematica di genere. Un tema sostanziale che ci fa capire quanto il lavoro in agricoltura ci obblighi a spenderci proprio per anche tutto ciò che sta di contorno al tema della dignità del lavoro in agricoltura, ma anche la garanzia di servizi per garantire credibilità e sostenere quindi la vita anche delle agricoltrici e degli agricoltori nei territori rurali. Benissimo le strategie, benissimo i rapporti di iniziativa, benissimo continuare a fare pressione per avere analisi e soluzioni adatte ai diversi contesti della politica agricola comune, ma come Verdi vorremmo essere molto chiari. Ci sembra che i problemi siano evidenti: l'accesso alla terra è sempre più difficile, con una concentrazione fondiaria che alza i requisiti anche di capitale per entrare nel settore e la PAC ha contribuito a questo. Due, il pagamento sottocosto: se non veniamo pagati adeguatamente mentre competiamo con standard a ribasso dalle importazioni, è evidente che non resistiamo.
Mancano servizi di base, quindi manca prospettiva di vita nei territori rurali e il clima cambia più in fretta della volontà politica, anche di quest'aula, che rallenta invece sulla resilienza e l'adattamento del settore. Quindi per noi rimane prioritario lavorare sulla resilienza del settore, la sicurezza alimentare, investire in queste misure, specialmente per chi è subentrato o subentrerà o entra nel settore agricolo, valorizzando e remunerando correttamente i servizi resi da queste pratiche, i servizi ecosistemici, con una riforma della PAC che si diriga i fondi verso l'adattamento climatico. È importante ricordarcelo perché noi che entriamo in agricoltura oggi abbiamo necessità di avere una prospettiva di lungo periodo e se non crediamo nell'agricoltura e nel lungo periodo perché non ci vengono dati gli strumenti per resistere in crisi climatica, è evidente che la difficoltà aumenta e l'allontanamento dall'agricoltura rischia di essere una prassi ancor più evidente.
Luke Ming Flanagan
Thanks, Chair. Unfortunately, our shadow can't be here today for the same reason as the last day. He's just got a new born baby and things are a little hectic. So I'm here to speak on his behalf, on behalf of our group, and we have the same message. First off, thanks to Maria Walsh for a report and for taking into account so many amendments that you're going to have to deal with.
But there's so many amendments because this is so important.
And one thing we don't want at the end of this process is that this gets ignored, because we have had reports like this before. And it's important that we've had reports on it before, but after a while you get a little bit skeptical whether it will be implemented. But it needs to be. The figures are stark and they're clear to hear. The average age of farmers rose from 55 to 57 between 2010 and 2020.
Number of farms for people under the age of 35 fell by 47%. And we're now looking at a massive shortfall in funding. And I'd have to say, as a parent myself and looking at my young, just young adult children, I'd have to say at the moment, if they were talking about people who aren't currently in farming getting into farming, I'd tell them under the current environment they would be insane to get involved in it.
But that if conditions were improved, if there was targeted funding which is suggested in this report, if there was an ambitious budget, if profitability was at the core of farming, whether that be producing public or private goods, then I would be able to say, yeah, go in that direction because if there is profitability and there is some sort of assurance that there's a future, there are so many other benefits to doing this job. You are out working with nature, you're doing something that can be very healthy, not if some people get their way with the pesticides at the moment, but you could have a really good future. So, I think this is a really important report. I hope some of our amendments are taken into account and most importantly, MEP Walsh, I hope you're actually listened to because we need to be, because without farmers we won't have food and without that we don't have a future.
Veronika Vrecionová
And now I have a question if somebody from ESN wants to take the floor? No. No. And now the ECR. Okay, I have here the list for ECR.
You have each one minute each and Jessica van Dalen will be first. Please, you have one minute, Jessica.
Jessika van Leeuwen
Thank you very much, Chair. I also would like to congratulate rapporteur Maria Walsh on this, on this good report. I have not much to add. I only tabled four amendments this time, so you were surprised that it was not 250 but only four. But I'd like to use this time to draw your attention to a deeply worrying situation in the Netherlands.
The new government has made it clear that they want to discourage the agri-industry in the Netherlands, using the excuse of nature preservation. Farmers that sign up for voluntary buyout are not allowed to go back into farming somewhere else in the Netherlands. Also, we have a large group of young potential farmers that would like to take over a farm but do not have the possibility because they do not have access to land, too expensive, or it's completely discouraged by measures taken by our government. So something that I was thinking about that we might have overlooked in this report and that we should try to get in somehow, maybe during plenary, is that we should also support cross-member states or better support the, the taken over of farms. Because we have a large potential of people that would like to be a farmer and we would, we should actually support them to do so in areas where we have a shortage of young farmers.
Thank you.
Bert-Jan Ruissen
Dank u wel, voorzitter, en dank collega Walsh voor haar uitstekende rapport. Ik ben het met haar eens dat generatievernieuwing echt een strategische prioriteit moet worden van het Europees landbouwbeleid. Laat het inderdaad maar de rode draad zijn in uw rapport, zou ik zeggen.
Ik ben het ook helemaal met u eens dat het ook een kwestie is van een brede agenda. We zijn er niet met een aantal startersubsidies. We hebben echt behoefte aan bijvoorbeeld gunstige fiscale regelingen, toegang tot grond is een belangrijk aandachtspunt. Dus echt een hele brede agenda is nodig om de jongeren op het platteland te houden en warm te krijgen, warm te laten worden ook voor de, warm te maken voor de, voor een mooie plek in de landbouw. Ik zou in dit verband ook het belang van vermindering van regeldruk nog eens willen benadrukken.
En ook de noodzaak om de concurrentiekracht van de agrarische sector te versterken. Dat zijn denk ik twee belangrijke pijlers die we echt nodig hebben, met name om de agrarische jongeren het gevoel te geven van: ja, als ik verder ga in de landbouw, dan ga ik verder in een sector die toekomstperspectief heeft. Dank u wel.
Ciaran Mullooly
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the rapporteur for the work on this file. Food security is, by definition, the continuity of Europe's food supply. So succession planning is therefore, in my opinion, not just and simply a farming issue, it is an essential pillar of the European Union's food security strategy.
If we're serious about generational renewal, we must therefore move beyond good intentions and provide young farmers with the practical supports they really need to build a future. And that's why our amendments call for 10% of the future CAP budget to be ring-fenced for generational renewal and also urge Member States to use the full flexibility available to absolutely maximize national investment. I think we also must recognize that young farmers entering CAP often face a complex system, so our amendments ask that genuine administrative mistakes should not result in disproportionate penalties or the full recovery of aid where there has been no fraud or no deliberate negligence. An accident is an accident. These amendments remove barriers to succession by supporting family land leasing, voluntary retirement incentives, stronger succession advice, and greater legal certainty for farm transfers.
I look forward to them going through. Thank you.
Asger Christensen
Tak til ordføreren for en god rapport. Det er et super, super godt og vigtigt emne det her. Vi skal hjælpe de unge i gang med uddannelse, også økonomisk. Og så er det helt, helt afgørende, at vi får etableret en landbrugspolitik, som er konkurrencedygtig, som giver de unge muligheden for, at de kan drive et landbrug med overskud.
Så, og jeg kan sige, jeg har selv to sønner, der er etableret som landmænd inden for de sidste to år. Men det kræver meget, meget stort mod, og det kræver meget, meget stor vilje fra finansiel side, for at det kan lade sig gøre. Så igen tak til forhandleren for en god rapport.
Thomas Waitz
Thank you, Chair. And I mean, now Commissioner Kristof-Hansen has talked about it here, about the overall age of farmers across the European Union being 57, and the country with the youngest farming population is my homeland, Austria. And why is it so? Maybe it's because we have 27% organic agriculture and young people like organic agriculture. Maybe it's because we have a lot of mixed farms and that's more encouraging for young people to move into farming.
Or agroecological methods are very welcome in our farming system and they like to play with that. Maybe it's because we have more direct marketing opportunities, so you have also other chances than to deliver to the big wholesalers. We have public procurement supporting local agriculture. We have regional value chains very much built via LEADER finances, which we need to ensure. And we still have lively rural areas where you like to stay with your family because there's still a kindergarten and a school and a shop.
Maybe let's take a look into this. But one point I want to make is this is the retirement and the payments, the pension payments. If we cannot ensure, and we have that in Austria, even if you have a small pension, you get a top-up to the minimum pension, no matter how small your farmer's pension is. If we don't have this kind of system, we can't expect from people in in in Spain or in Portugal to go into retirement with 300 euros a month. That is also hindering generational renewal and we take need to take a look into this.
Maybe it has to do with these things.
Thank you very much.
Daniel Buda
Vă mulțumesc foarte mult, doamnă președintă. Îi mulțumesc Mariei pentru munca depusă. Fără discuție că ceea ce ține de reînnoirea generațională este un subiect foarte complicat și complex și plecăm de la o premisă pe care nu o putem ignora potrivit datelor pe care le avem și anume că un tânăr fermier ar câștiga cu 40% mai puțin decât în orice alt sector economic.
Și atunci se pune întrebarea firească cum putem totuși să îi atragem pe acești tineri în sectorul agricol, cunoscut fiind faptul, așa cum s-a spus și aici, că da, depinde securitatea alimentară a noastră a tuturor de ceea ce înseamnă succesul în reînnoirea generațională. Și în același timp mai spun un lucru pe care l-am tot repetat aici: câți dintre noi și-ar trimite proprii copii în zona rurală să lucreze acolo și dacă acest spațiu rural este astăzi pregătit la un nivel adecvat pentru a oferi un trai decent tinerilor? Dincolo de ceea ce înseamnă accesul la terenuri, finanțare și așa mai departe, cred că este foarte important pentru noi să mergem dincolo de ceea ce înseamnă necesitatea unui sprijin financiar pentru instalarea tinerilor în agricultură, să găsim acele mecanisme necesare și suficiente ca ei să poată să fie sprijiniți mai departe pentru a putea să supraviețuiască în această zonă a agriculturii, ținând cont de marile provocări și multele provocări pe care le au, de creșterea prețului la îngrășăminte, secetă, inundații și așa mai departe. Și eu cred că dacă dorim să reușim cu ceea ce înseamnă reînnoirea generațională, în această zonă trebuie să mergem, a durabilității fermelor după ce aceștia au fost instalați. Mulțumesc.
OK. Thank you, Stefan Keller.
Stefan Köhler
Ja, vielen Dank, Herr Vorsitzender. Ja, Maria, herzlichen Dank für deine tolle Arbeit und Vorschläge. Es wurde jetzt schon viel gesagt, dass der Zugang zu Land, zu Geld etc. wichtige Voraussetzungen sind für Junglandwirte, dass sie überhaupt einsteigen.
Aber ich glaube, was viel wichtiger ist, wir müssen auch, wir konkurrieren ja eigentlich mit der normalen restlichen Wirtschaft, der Industrie, dass wir auch als Staat uns Gedanken machen, wie sind denn da die Unterschiede zwischen landwirtschaftlichem Einkommen und gewerblichem Einkommen, dass man das vergleicht und dass man als Staat auch Zahlen liefert, um regionale Anpassungen zu machen, damit sich die Jugend auch beim Einkommen für die Landwirtschaft entscheidet. Sie arbeiten mehr und sie brauchen auch ein gleichwertiges Gehalt, sonst wandern sie uns ins Gewerbe oder in die Industrie ab.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay. Thank you very much. And now I would like to ask Mr. Schilthuis from DG AGRI. You have four minutes for your statement, please go ahead.
Gijs Schilthuis
Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'd like to thank the rapporteur and the shadow rapporteurs for all the work and I think all the members also for all the amendments. Please allow me to make three short messages and a short update on the implementation of the strategy for generational renewal of the Commission. I think firstly, the high attention that this report gets demonstrates the high political importance that the Parliament attaches to generational renewal. It is indeed one of the central discussions on the future of European agriculture, the human factor of food security.
And I think the discussion today has demonstrated that the five axes of the Commission strategy are all crucial: access to finance and credit, access to land, access to knowledge, innovation, rural services, and succession and retirement.
I think all these five elements resonate with you. Secondly, generational renewal is not only about supporting young farmers, supporting new farmers, but also about the strengthening of the resilience and competitiveness of the agri-food sector. It's about European strategic autonomy, safeguarding food security in the increasingly challenging geopolitical context. And then it is about, of course, making sure there is a business case for young farmers. Several of you mentioned the word profitability, the ability to make a living off the farm and all the different goods, products that farms deliver.
I think this economic aspect is super important. Thirdly, the Commission takes very good note of the call from many of the political groups to dedicate at least 10% of the future CAP budget to young farmers and generational renewal. Goes in the same direction as the recommendation in our strategy that at least 6% of the budget should be dedicated to this topic from 2027 onwards as a step towards our ambition to doubling the share of young and new farmers by 2040. And of course, rapporteur Lins has put 8% on the table. I think this is an important discussion and an important link between this debate and the future Common Agricultural Policy.
Finally, please allow me to update you on the implementation of the current strategy.
I would like to make two, like to provide two elements on that. First, the conference on the financing, access to finance for young farmers that the Commission organized together with the European Investment Bank in Warsaw in June. Very interesting and good conference because it brought together bankers and people in the financial sector with young farmers and showcased a lot of examples of how things can be done and how young farmers can be supported in a good way and how their business case can be supported in a good way. And it also led to a toolkit that can help financial institutions and young farmers to set up these financial instruments in a good way. Second element is the strong support we see across the amendments for women in agriculture.
And in this context, I'd like to inform you that on the 30th of June, we held the first online meeting of the Women in Farming platform that we have established. We had 650 applications. Quite a few of the women that applied joined this first meeting. And I think this is an important step to also building a lasting community of exchange to strengthen the position of women in European agriculture. And with that, I look forward to the continuing cooperation on this very important topic.
And thank you for your attention.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay, thank you, Mr. Schiltuis. And I would like to ask again rapporteur Maria Walsh, please, for your conclusion. You have five minutes.
Maria Walsh
Thank you, Chair. Hopefully I won't utilize all five. Just want to thank colleagues for their input, not just through amendments, but here for our second, if not third discussion on generation renewal. Just to share a quick consensus of the amendments we got from a cross-party point of view. We've seen amendments on protecting or increasing support for young farmers.
We heard that reiterated again today around the 10%. Improving access to land and finance. Retirement, of course, coming in and how that will play out to make it viable and profitable for what I would call cradle to grave of farming. Strengthening farming profitability. I take points from all colleagues there.
Better succession planning. Supporting women in agriculture is a key priority for me personally. Investing in rural services, improving education and advisory services, making farming much more attractive.
But we can talk all day about this report if we don't make some specific binding targets. So as we move into technicals and shadows, that's certainly something that I'll be working towards and making sure I'm working with my colleague Norbert Lins on the final CAP report. I think to my Renew shadow colleague who said a very clear message needs to get sent to our Commission and Council on generational renewal needing to be a priority, I wholeheartedly agree with that, as well as our colleague from the Green who said a long-term vision is needed. I mean, much of the conversations I'm having with young farmers is around the length of our CAP, of which generational renewal feeds into. The five to seven year increments, the pendulum swing is not sufficient to them building a business.
We might not be able to change this in this report or the next CAP, but it's certainly something as political direction that we certainly need to take in on board.
I hear the point on, um, loosening or certainly simplifying administration burden to make it more competitive, uh, and many other points. Uh, I don't know how expensive land is in, in Austria, but Mr. MEP Weiss will certainly give us a good deal, no doubt. And I take all his points on why it's working so well, and it is. And we've got to give credit where credit's due. Finally, one thing, um, that didn't appear as much and certainly something I hope to feed into is around the risk management, uh, and also farm relief services, two very, very important elements that we will see in CAP that I hope as generation renewal we're also seeing.
And then finally, just as we break into summer, uh, and many of us no doubt linked to agriculture will be at agricultural shows, I hope the message we're speaking to from this institution towards young farmers is one of positivity and that we're here to fend for them and develop for them, uh, taking points. Viability and profitability needs to be there, but if we're not singing from a positive hymn sheet, we're going to be, uh, kicking ourselves, and I certainly wouldn't like that to, to, to happen, particularly for our young farmers at this critical juncture. Thank you.
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you, thank you Maria for this high-quality report, and thanks also to all colleagues for their amendments. I am very pleased to see that there is a broad agreement across all political groups that generational renewal is one of the greatest challenges facing European agriculture. Without young farmers, there will be no food security and no vibrant rural areas. I particularly welcome the strong support for practical measures.
Better access to finance, land, innovation, and risk management is exactly what young people need. Thank you very much. And now let's turn to the item number five. Or maybe... Okay, before I would like to welcome the visitors of our colleague Mullally.
And they are from Midlands-North-West in Ireland. Welcome here. And now item number five. Dear colleagues, we now move to the exchange of view with the Commission on the recently concluded EU-Australia trade agreement, with a particular focus on the provisions concerning the sugar sector. I would like to welcome the representative from the Commission and thank him for joining us today.
As members are aware, the political conclusion of the negotiation was announced by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on 24th March 26 during her visit to Australia.
The agreement is now entering the next phase of the ratification process. First, it will be submitted to the Council for signature and then Parliament will be asked to give its consent before the Council can adopt the decision concluding the agreement. The agreement will enter into force only after both the EU and Australia have completed their respective internal procedures. The agri dimension of this agreement has attracted particular attention, particularly the sugar sector. Under the agreement, the EU will establish a duty-free tariff rate quota of 35,000 tonnes of raw cane sugar for refining.
I now give the floor for four minutes to Mr. Serra from DG Trade for his presentation.
So Mr. Serra, the floor is yours.
Gijs Schilthuis
Micro, please. I will try this one, okay, this one works. Good afternoon everyone, and I represent DG Agriculture, and I will go quickly through the main features of the EU-Australia FTA that has been concluded, as we have just recorded. It has been a long, winding road with several ups and downs, two ministerials in 2023, then 18 months of silence, then negotiations have resumed in May 2025, and to see whether there was a possibility to strike a deal. There was a possibility, and after several months of talks, there was a momentum when both sides have decided that a balanced, negotiated outcome could be reached.
There is a clear geopolitical and economic rationale for this agreement.
This is an agreement that in a turbulent global context will send a strong signal by strengthening ties with a like-minded democracy in the Indo-Pacific region and it will further promote our trade diversification agenda. It is to be recorded that the EU has already concluded recently negotiations with India and Indonesia. We have agreements in force with Korea, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam and New Zealand. So this agreement with Australia would be the eighth agreement in the Indo-Pacific region. In terms of benefit for the EU and notably for the EU agriculture, this is an agreement that will remove over 99% of tariffs on EU exports to Australia, improve access to critical raw materials and strengthens once again strategic ties with a like-minded country in that region.
On agriculture, this will allow the full elimination of tariffs from the Australian side at entry into force for all EU-Australia exports, except cheeses with tariffs that will be eliminated in three years. And this agreement will protect also over 400 EU geographical indications, enhancing the access to a very competitive and lucrative market.
And I would like to emphasize that it was not easy to conclude an agreement on geographical indications with a country like Australia that has been for decades one of the most close proxy to the US positions anti-geographical indications. This is an agreement that caters for EU agricultural sensitivities by introducing only limited and well-calibrated openings in the form of TRQs, tariff-rate quotas, for the most sensitive sectors, including sugar. These openings will be gradually implemented with phasing-in periods and subject to unprecedented sustainability conditions. In what concerns sugar, that has been considered since the very beginning a sensitive sector of the EU, the openings have been kept to the minimum. White sugar and specialty sugars have been excluded from any tariff liberalization.
And in relation to raw sugar cane for refining, as you have just recorded, there has been a new TRQ that's been opened of 35,000 tons with an in-quota rate at zero.
Just to put this volume into dimension, this represents less than 0.3% of the EU domestic consumption. And it's a volume that is significantly lower than what was requested by Australia. Once again, to give a bit of a context, Australia is the second largest exporter of sugar in the world. It exports roughly 3.5 million tonnes annually to the world market. And even if we look into concessions that Australia has been granted by, for example, the UK, those concessions are definitely much more significant.
The UK's considered TRQ starting at 80,000 tonnes from entry into force and full liberalisation from 2031. Once again, to put a bit of words into this volume, the concession granted has been qualified by the sugar exporting sector in Australia as horrendous. And this is for me, as a negotiator, a badge of honour. Once again, sustainability conditions have been applied to this product, and this is unprecedented.
So all sugar that will enter the EU have to be accredited or certified by a recognized and credible sustainability standard, including Bonsucro and Smartcane BMP. I would stop it at that, and just to probably close, the Commission stands open to continue to discuss with this committee, with the INTA committee, this very file, its specificities, its details in this preliminary phase, and even more when the file will reach the European Parliament for the formal consent. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. And now I think that we can start with our coordinators. You have two minutes each, and first Herbert Dorfmann from EPP.
Herbert Dorfmann
Ja, herzlichen Dank und herzlichen Dank auch Dr. Serra für die Erklärungen, die ich glaube ich sehr umfangreich war, vor allem was auch den Zuckermarkt betrifft. Ich hätte eine Frage, vielleicht gibt es noch Zahlen, wie unsere Handelsbilanz insgesamt mit Agrarprodukten mit Australien ausschaut, das heißt, wie viel exportieren wir und wie viel importieren wir.
Das wäre vielleicht ganz interessant, um auch eine Abwägung zu oder ein Gefühl zu bekommen, wie sehr da auch für uns Möglichkeiten bestehen. Was den Zuckermarkt betrifft, denke ich, ist die Situation insgesamt die, dass der Konsum in Europa nicht zunimmt. Und es mag zwar wahr sein, dass diese Quote ein sehr kleiner Teil des Zuckerkonsums in Europa ist, aber es wurde auch dargestellt, dass wir in der letzten Zeit eine ganze Reihe von Abkommen unterschrieben haben. Ich denke Mercosur, natürlich auch Mexiko, das sind Staaten, wo Zucker sehr viel angebaut wird. Und man sollte da glaube ich doch auch bedenken, dass es kumulierte Effekte gibt.
Das heißt, dass insgesamt durch die Kumulierung dieser Abkommen doch eine recht beträchtliche Menge an zusätzlichen Zucker auf den europäischen Markt kommt, auf einem Markt, wo es eh schon schwierig ist, weil wir ja alle wissen, wie schwierig die Situation der Rübenzuckerproduzenten in Europa ist, vor allem in einigen Teilen des Kontinents, wo Zucker kaum mehr interessant ist für die Produktion. Herzlichen Dank.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay, thank you Herbert. Maria Grapini, S&D.
Mulțumesc, doamnă președintă.
Maria Grapini
Mulțumesc Comisiei Europene pentru informațiile date. Cred că nu e nicio noutate dacă vă spun că sectorul agricol consideră critic acordul și consideră inacceptabile concesiile acordate Australiei în ceea ce privește zahărul, carnea de vită și carnea de miel. Dacă revin la zahăr, o întrebare concretă: cum intenționează Comisia să monitorizeze impactul concret al acestei concesii asupra pieței europene a zahărului și ce praguri de alertă au fost stabilite pentru activarea mecanismului de salvgardare? Apoi, există riscul real ca o eventuală lipsă de aliniere a standardelor despre care dumneavoastră ați vorbit să creeze un avantaj concurențial neloial pentru producătorii australieni. Cum se va verifica certificarea despre care ați vorbit?
Pentru că nu e totuna să trecem în acord că trebuie respectate niște standarde față de ceea ce se întâmplă în realitate. Și așa cum a spus și colegul meu de la PPE, știți că sunt foarte multe acorduri care au venit ca o presiune, a fost și Mercosur-ul și celelalte acorduri.
Totuși, poate Comisia să indice un prag cantitativ clar și precis peste care mecanismul de salvgardare să fie declanșat automat, fără a mai fi necesară o decizie politică discreționară? Mulțumesc.
Gilles Pennelle
Oui, merci Madame la Présidente, encore un traité de libre-échange. Alors la Commission est contente parce qu'à chaque fois qu'elle signe un traité de libre-échange, ça provoque chez ses rapporteurs beaucoup de joie et beaucoup d'arguments que je n'accepte pas. Alors bien évidemment, on parle plutôt du sucre ici, mais je voudrais rappeler quand même que dans ce traité de libre-échange, c'est encore nos producteurs de bœuf qui vont souffrir. C'est aussi 15 000 tonnes de produits laitiers, lait en poudre, beurre. C'est aussi 10 000 tonnes d'éthanol que nous allons devoir importer.
Bref, c'est encore un mauvais coup pour nos agriculteurs. Alors sur la question du sucre, il s'agit d'un très mauvais coup. Voilà, de la part de la Commission qui semble tout faire finalement pour détruire notre industrie sucrière. Car le principal problème de ces traités de libre-échange, c'est l'aspect cumulatif. La Commission ne cesse de nous dire que ces importations n'ont pas de conséquences sur le marché européen.
Oui, mais quand on ajoute à tous les autres traités de libre-échange, et bien on arrive à une concurrence qui n'est plus tenable. L'addition des quotas pour le sucre de l'ensemble des traités de libre-échange porterait les importations de sucre au sein de l'Union européenne à 1,5 million de tonnes par an. Ce chiffre, il est donné par la Confédération générale des producteurs de betteraves. Alors moi j'ai une pensée particulière pour les betteraviers français qui sont les premiers producteurs européens en termes de production et qui subissent encore une fois un sale coup. Et en plus si on ajoute avec le gouvernement français qui fait des surtranspositions qui les pénalisent, on ne peut penser qu'à eux aujourd'hui.
Oui, ça ne sera que 0,3 % de notre consommation.
Alors non, ce n'est pas un bon traité de libre-échange. Non, nous n'acceptons pas cette dérive idéologique du libre-échange à tout prix. Nous devons protéger notre agriculture, nous devons aider nos producteurs. C'est tout le contraire que fait la Commission.
Bert-Jan Ruissen
Dank u wel voorzitter en dank aan de Commissie voor de toelichting op het handelsakkoord met Australië. Ik ben van mening dat als het gaat over handelsakkoorden dat je ze van akkoord tot akkoord moet beoordelen en op de eigen merites moet bekijken.
We moeten ons realiseren dat sommige handelsakkoorden inderdaad echt wel kansen bieden. En ik denk dat ook dit akkoord ook voor landbouwproducten ook wel een aantal kansen biedt. Tegelijkertijd moet je ook onder ogen zien dat we op een aantal punten natuurlijk toch wat concessies hebben gedaan en moeten we ook heel goed kijken wat zijn de consequenties voor eventuele gevoelige producten. Nou, in dit geval stuiten we dan op de concessie die gedaan is op het vlak van suiker, 35.000 ton. Het oogt niet als een hele grote schokkende hoeveelheid.
Dus in die zin is hier wellicht mee te leven. Maar toch een vraag hierover voorzitter. Vanuit de EVP werd het ook aangegeven. We maken natuurlijk, we sluiten de laatste tijd heel veel handelsakkoorden. En wat al die concessies, als je al die concessies bij elkaar optelt, wat zijn de effecten daar dan van?
En daarom zou ik toch ook aan de Commissie de vraag willen stellen: bent u bereid om de cumulatieve effecten van al die handelsakkoorden van de afgelopen tijd eens netjes op een rijtje te zetten, zodat we daar ook als Parlement goed zicht op kunnen krijgen en ook een goed eindoordeel kunnen geven over de specifieke handelsakkoorden zoals in dit geval het handelsakkoord met Australië. Dank.
Elsi Katainen
Thank chair. In the current competition position we are living now, despite all the challenges we've heard, it is important for the EU to strengthen cooperation with like-minded partners. This will help us reduce dependencies, creating new markets for European companies and strengthen exports and competitiveness. EU cannot isolate. At the same time, however, it is important to ensure that agriculture doesn't once again become a bargaining tool for trade policy objectives.
Although the trade agreement applies the EU's strict health and safety standards and includes the safeguard mechanism for sudden spikes in imports, many farmers and almost all of our politicians as well still have serious doubts about the balance of the agreement.
This example applies heavily to the European sensitive sugar sector, which is now facing the trade with one of the world's largest and most competitive sugar exporters. Adding to the concerns in the fact that at the same time European farmers are struggling with rise in input costs and general uncertainty, I'd like to ask Commission that how do you intend to convince European farmers that their concerns have been genuinely addressed in this trade agreement, and how will you ensure that the preparation and implementation of the agreement are communicated to farmers openly and transparently in the future? Thank you.
Martin Häusling
Ja, ich glaube, die Strategie der Europäischen Union, Handelsabkommen mit Freunden zu machen, die uns politisch auch nahestehen als Demokratien und auch die Standards vergleichbar sind, macht mit Sicherheit mehr Sinn. Es ist mit Sicherheit unproblematischer als das Mercosur-Abkommen. Trotzdem frage ich mich immer, was hier eigentlich die Rechte, die extreme Rechte eigentlich will. Jedes Freihandelsabkommen kritisiert, nichts darf nach Europa rein, aber bitteschön exportieren dürfen wir schon noch, oder?
Also, dass das jetzt alles Ideologie ist, was die Kommission da macht, das muss man mir mal erklären. Ich finde, wir leben auch in Europa vom Handel, das ist klar, und wir müssen diese Strategie natürlich kritisch beleuchten, aber nicht grundsätzlich ablehnen. Das ist doch der große Unterschied zu dem, was die extreme Rechte hier immer vorträgt. Ich finde, die Kommission hat so schlecht gar nicht verhandelt. Man muss überlegen, dass Australien vor gar nicht so langer Zeit jetzt die Abkommen grundsätzlich infrage gestellt hat und wir jetzt wieder zusammengekommen sind, das macht Sinn.
Ich glaube auch, dass die geschützten Herkunftszeichen immer ein großer Punkt ist für die Europäische Union, dass unsere geschützten Herkunftszeichen auch dann bei dem Handel gelten. Ich hätte aber auch noch eine Frage: Was bedeuten denn Nachhaltigkeitskriterien für Zucker? Das muss man mir, glaube ich, noch mal erläutern, was bedeutet das konkret? Wie sehen die Nachhaltigkeitsstandards denn in Australien aus? Das könnte die Kommission vielleicht noch mal erläutern.
Ich denke auch, das haben ja hier mehrere gesagt, wir müssen natürlich die Summe aller Handelsabkommen sehen. Das hört sich zwar nicht viel an, 35.000 Tonnen.
Wir haben aber quasi in letzter Zeit immer mit mehr Ländern, wir müssen schon gucken, dass wir immer mehr Freihandelsabkommen, dass wir dann nicht sozusagen am Ende ganz andere Summen in der Gesamtbilanz haben, da müssen wir schon drüber nachdenken. Insgesamt sehe ich dieses Abkommen als nicht so problematisch an und ich denke, wenn Kriterien, die wir in Europa festlegen, dann auch schließlich für die Importe gelten, dann können wir damit leben.
Luke Ming Flanagan
Thank you very much. When it comes to agreements like this and you listen to the European Commission talk about strategic autonomy, at times to me that doesn't really add up. And we're told that, we're told time and time again with each agreement that it's only so many thousand tons, but as previous speakers have said, what is the cumulative effect when you add the whole thing together? And we're told on Mercosur it's only going to be a small amount of beef. We're not told that it's only going to be the best cuts.
We're not given like-for-like figures with what's going to be imported and what Europe already produces.
And in the dairy industry and the price of milk, if it was a case that a small increase in production wasn't going to lead to a massive reduction in price, which it did in the dairy industry, well, if we see 25,000 tons extra tons of lamb coming into the European Union, that is 5% of what we produce. Who's to say what impact that will have on prices? Has there been a study done? And from the point of view of challenges that hill farmers in the west of Ireland would face from the point of view of access to land, the amount of lambing seasons that there are, and how cheaply they can produce it and the different quality standards, how will that be differentiated to the customer at the end of the day? And we were told in the past that we should get rid of our good profitable sugar industry.
Ireland didn't benefit, and to me it's a good case study in the effects of globalization. You can still buy Irish sugar in the shops in Ireland even though it's not produced in Ireland. It says Irish sugar on the bag. So my worry is that in the long term, how will we be able to compete with these systems? Like, are they like-for-like?
But I just heard the Commission boast there that Australia aren't very happy about what was done. Okay that might be good negotiating but how does that fit with remaining friends with someone if you feel like you didn't say screwed but you might as well? Wouldn't be the best way to make friends in my life if I was to screw me neighbors and go I got a good deal.
And I hear about, I get this idea if you're trading with someone you're not going to be fighting with them.
Ivan David
Děkuji pěkně. Děkuji za ty informace, které jsme dostali od zástupce Komise, protože stejně jako předřečníci je pokládám za naprosto nedostatečné, protože jsme se nedozvěděli nic o skutečné bilanci mezi zemědělským vývozem a dovozem a samozřejmě ta nerovnováha se bude týkat zejména některých komodit. Austrálie je zemědělská velmoc. Tady nejde jenom o cukr a je otázka, jakými cestami bude využívat tlak na to, aby samozřejmě zvýhodnila svoje vývozy.
Tady hovořili francouzští kolegové a já uvedu takový pěkný příklad. Před vstupem České republiky do Evropské unie prostě byl České republice dán limit, kolik cukru smíme vyrábět a francouzská korporace potom skoupila cukrovary v České republice, aby je zbourala. Takže jsme se z vývozce stali velkým dovozcem. Je to příklad, kterým samozřejmě mohou postupovat nadnárodní firmy kdekoliv na světě, pokud k tomu budou mít příležitost a pokud se výroba stane neefektivní, tak samozřejmě je záměrem monopolních výrobců, aby získali úplnou nadvládu a mohli si diktovat ceny. Takže něco takového lze očekávat a já bych se rád dozvěděl, a to je moje otázka od zástupce Komise, jaká je reálná bilance v obchodu mezi Austrálií a zeměmi Evropské unie, zejména o jaké jde komodity a k jakým to asi povede důsledkům.
Děkuji.
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you very much. It was last coordinator and now catch the eye, you have one minute each and first is Céline Imart from EPP.
Céline Imart
Merci Présidente. Monsieur le représentant de la Commission, à chaque nouvel accord commercial, nous avons droit au même refrain : un accord équilibré, des garanties solides. Mais à force de repeindre la façade, vous n'arrivez plus à masquer les fissures. Comment parler de concurrence loyale lorsque nous savons que les producteurs australiens ont un coût de production deux fois moins élevé que nos agriculteurs ? La Commission fait de la transparence envers les consommateurs une priorité.
Savent-ils que l'agneau australien subit une pratique qui s'appelle le mulesing ? Sauront-ils que l'agneau a été 48 heures sans eau, avec plus de temps dans des containers que dans les vertes prairies australiennes ? Au-delà de chaque accord pris isolément, c'est le cumul qui menace nos filières. Le même scénario se répète pour le sucre : plus de 1,7 million de tonnes d'importations avec des conditions préférentielles qui rentreront sur notre marché, 20 % de notre consommation. Et là encore, le dispositif de certification qui autorise 30 matières actives non autorisées dans l'UE pose problème.
Continuer à demander à nos agriculteurs l'impossible tout en ouvrant grand nos frontières, c'est programmer leur disparition progressive. Merci.
Okay, thank you.
Krzysztof Hetman
Dziękuję bardzo, pani przewodnicząca. Czytam, że w tej umowie będą zawarte bilateralne klauzule ochronne i Unia będzie mogła wprowadzić środki ochronne w przypadku wzrostu importu produktów z Australii, jeżeli wzrost ten spowoduje szkodę lub będzie groził wystąpieniem szkody dla jednego z unijnych sektorów. Klauzule obejmują okres siedmioletni, dla najbardziej wrażliwych produktów są różne, na przykład wołowina 15 lat, cukier 8. W związku z powyższym mam jedno krótkie pytanie do przedstawiciela Komisji Europejskiej i bardzo bym prosił o konkretną odpowiedź. Jakie w związku z tym, z tymi zapisami w umowie, są konkretne progi ilościowe lub cenowe, które będą uruchamiać mechanizm ochronny oraz w jakim czasie Komisja będzie zobowiązana do podjęcia działań?
Dziękuję bardzo.
Daniel Buda
Mulțumesc, doamnă președintă.
În România, în anii '90, cultivam 240.000 de hectare de sfeclă de zahăr, astăzi mai cultivăm undeva în jur de 20.000 de hectare. De ce? Pentru că pur și simplu această cultură a fost oarecum sugrumată de diverse norme impuse de la nivelul Uniunii Europene și fermierii s-au reorientat către alte culturi. În același timp, vedem că avem acorduri comerciale și evident că nu contestăm necesitatea acestor acorduri comerciale, dar în aceste zone sensibile, cum este sfecla de zahăr, mai ales că noi suntem vecini și cu Ucraina de unde vine foarte mult zahăr, se pune întrebarea firească ce facem totuși cu cultivatorii noștri? Și colegul Hedman a pus punctul pe i.
Ne interesează să știm care sunt volumele la care se raportează Comisia Europeană în momentul în care va activa aceste clauze de salvgardare. Și rog Comisia Europeană să aibă în vedere discuțiile de la încheierea acordului cu Mercosur. Acolo am stabilit niște mecanisme destul de simple, spun eu, și de la îndemână pentru a putea activa clauzele de salvgardare și de aceea solicit Comisiei Europene să activeze aceste mecanisme. Și mai departe, cred că este foarte important să vedem care este efectul cumulativ al acestor acorduri comerciale, pentru că se pare că nu este săptămână de la Dumnezeu să nu dăm vot pe un acord comercial. Bun, este în regulă, dar nu vreau să plătească sectorul agricol încheierea acestor acorduri comerciale.
Ciaran Mullooly
Thank you, Chair. Trade agreements cannot be assessed in isolation. We must examine the cumulative impact on European farmers on established markets for EU produce. And I'll try and explain why. For geographical and logistical reasons, the UK is Ireland's most important beef market.
Our exports to the UK were worth approximately 1.6 billion and accounted for almost half our total beef export. Yet the UK-Australia agreement is progressively increasing duty-free access already for Australian beef, sheep meat, sugar, butter, and cheese. So this creates a real risk that lower-cost imports will displace Irish and European produce from UK supermarket shelves, maybe not today or tomorrow, but in the future. So before granting Australia further access to the EU market, will the Commission assess the combined impact of the EU-Australia and UK-Australia agreements on Irish beef exports, farmgate prices, and market share? And European farmers, Chair, they cannot, must not be expected to pay twice through increased imports into the EU and by losing valuable export markets into the United Kingdom.
Thank you.
Stefan Köhler
Ja, vielen Dank, werte Vorsitzende. Viele haben jetzt schon gesagt und ihre Probleme und Befürchtungen über den Zuckermarkt geteilt. Und wir haben nicht nur mit Handelsabkommen Probleme, wir haben ja insgesamt in der Zuckerrübenindustrie ein Problem. Der Kollege aus Rumänien hat schon gesagt, wir haben Stolbur und SBR, das die Landwirte vor große Herausforderungen stellt und auch die Zuckerindustrie insgesamt. Man redet ja schon von Schließung von Zuckerrübenfabriken, was natürlich fatal wäre, weil die nie mehr wiederkommen werden.
Und ich möchte einen Dank an die Kommission mal ausrichten, dass sie die aktive Veredelung abgeschafft hat. Das hat ja auch zu einer Entlastung geführt. Aber wie steht die Kommission konkret dazu, E20-Treibstoffe einzuführen? Das würde nämlich zu einer wirklichen Entlastung am europäischen Zuckermarkt führen und würde auch den Landwirten helfen. Und dann könnte man auch vielleicht diese Handelsabkommen rechtfertigen.
Vielen Dank.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay, thank you. A nyní bych ráda dala slovo paní kolegyni Roth Neveďalové, prosím.
Katarína Roth Neveďalová
Tiež sa pridávam k svojim kolegom, ktorí hovoria o tom, že naozaj by sme potrebovali kumulovaný súhrn všetkých týchto zmlúv a toho, čo napríklad sa týka nielen cukru, ale aj mlieka a ostatných výrobkov, pretože vidíme, že sa to strašne nabaľuje. Ja chápem, že aj ja podporujem obchodné dohody s inými časťami sveta, pretože je to pre nás dôležité určite. Ale zároveň tu rozprávame o uhlíkovej stope, o zelených opatreniach pre Európsku úniu a potom dovážame mlieko a cukor z druhej strany sveta. Aký má toto zmysel pre Európsku úniu a ako môžeme byť takto naozaj dobrí v tom podporovaní tých lokálnych producentov?
Ďakujem veľmi pekne.
Speaker 43
Pardon, paní kolegyně, prosím zpomalte trošku, tlumočníci mají problém, děkuji.
Katarína Roth Neveďalová
Prepáčte, ospravedlňujem sa. Čiže v prvom rade by som chcela požiadať Komisiu, či je schopná, aby nám dala ten kumul vlastne tých dohôd a jednotlivých položiek, ktoré sa týkajú poľnohospodárstva. Mňa veľmi trápi, že napríklad na Slovensku nedávno zavrel druhý cukrovar a už máme iba jeden, že naša výroba alebo produkcia cukrovej repy sa znížila o jednu štvrtinu, že dovážame obrovské množstvo cukrovej repy napríklad aj z Ukrajiny a z ďalších krajín a potom podpíšeme dohodu, že dodávame naozaj cukor aj z Austrálie. Tak nech mi niekto vysvetlí, že ako chceme byť zelení a dovážať z druhej strany sveta to, čo máme tu a nielen cukor, ale hovorme o mlieku, hovorme o sušenom mlieku, ktoré budeme dovážať z Austrálie, z druhej strany sveta. Ďakujem.
Benoit Cassart
Merci, Madame la Présidente. L'accès préférentiel au contingent de sucre est conditionné à une certification privée de durabilité. Pourquoi la Commission a-t-elle retenu un mécanisme reposant sur des standards privés plutôt que des exigences directement inscrites dans l'accord ou alignées sur la législation européenne ? Quels critères minimaux un schéma privé devra-t-il satisfaire pour être reconnu par l'Union européenne ? Ces critères seront-ils juridiquement contraignants ou laissés à l'appréciation des parties ?
Comment la Commission vérifiera-t-elle que le sucre importé sous contingent provient effectivement de plantations certifiées et respecte les exigences de durabilité ? Quels seront les mécanismes de contrôle et de traçabilité ? L'Australie utilise par exemple toujours les néonicotinoïdes, est-ce que tout ça est acceptable ? Merci.
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you very much. And now I would like to give the floor again to Mr. Serra, please. You have just now eight minutes for your replies.
Gijs Schilthuis
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all the interventions that have been done. I would like to start by giving indeed a bit of a background when it comes to the balance of the trade between Australia and the EU in agricultural products. The EU currently enjoys a significant trade surplus vis-à-vis Australia, with a trade balance of 2.3 billions in favor of the EU. This is a data that relates to 2024. It's a data that you can take also for granted for 2025.
So it's 4.2 billions of exports versus 1.9 billions of imports. And there are a number of explaining factors to those figures. This is due to certainly the high quality and competitiveness of the EU agri-food.
And Australia is the EU's second largest market for agri-food exports, despite only 27 million people living in that island, which is a continent. And there is a high income status in Australia, there's an appetite for European high quality food products, and this explains partially the picture that I provide to you. But there's also another story, that it's a story that has been profoundly important in understanding the outcome that is in front of you. The EU and Australia, we have a very different tariff structure. Australia has in general very low tariffs, 5% on most products, including agricultural products, while the EU has relatively high tariffs, and notably on the most sensitive agricultural products, up to 160% in certain cases.
So, despite Australia being a main commodity producer and exporter worldwide, the second largest exporter of beef, the largest exporter of sheep meat, the second largest exporter of sugar, and also of some other crops, Australia had, or has, until the agreement is in force, very limited access to the EU market.
And this is something that I would like you to invite you to bear in mind. Given that imbalance, or let's say different trade structure if we want to be just neutral, it's just natural that agriculture has been one of the main offensive interests for Australia in these FTA negotiations. And if we look into the final outcome, the final outcome is the one that I've recorded at the very beginning. Australia has liberalized fully, fully, the trade on agricultural goods coming from the EU. And the EU has not done the same.
The EU has kept a number of products under very controlled TRQ regime, opening only small portion of its market to imports from Australia. So there are not winners and losers in FTAs, but certainly this is a fact. We have protected the sensitive products of the EU. There have been a number of interventions on the concept of cumulative impact of FTAs. And this is certainly one of the main drivers of the Commission's reflections when we conduct negotiations, notably in agriculture and notably with a powerhouse like Australia on certain sensitive products.
I would invite you to look into the 2021 study that the Commission has provided, the 2024 study on the cumulative impact of FTAs. All these studies are already made accumulating the effect of the FTAs in place at that point in time. And the EU is contemplated to renew the study or to update the study on the basis of the new FTAs that has concluded recently. But for your information, already the 2024 study was using Mercosur in its baseline, we call it technically. So the Mercosur outcome was already simulated in the 2024 study to arrive to certain conclusions.
And in that same, in the very same study, the UK-EU and UK-Australia was also simulated. So the 2024 study is already a study that looks into those dimensions to derive certain conclusions that you know very well.
The conclusion is that essentially the EU is a winner in the FTA trade agenda that has conducted in the last 15 years. There were a number of points on standards or certification on certain production. Indeed, the EU and Australia, they have different standards in certain respects, different climatic conditions as well. If we just look into sugar, there was a precise question on why the EU has chosen or negotiated to certify imports from sugar from Australia on the basis of a private standard like Bonsucro or like Smartcane BMP instead of, let's say, imposing our legislation into the imports of Australia. But the simple reason is that there is no such a thing as a certification of sustainability for EU sugar.
There are a number of provisions in the EU that apply to main crops, including sugar production or sugar beet, but this is not a certification. So we are essentially asking the Australians to provide a certification that is unprecedented in scale and in depth for the sake of exporting to us 35,000 tons of sugar, which is once again 0.3% of our internal consumption. Lamb and beef have been mentioned.
I will not enter into the beef conundrum because probably I don't have the time to do it. On lamb, once again, 25,000 tons with conditionalities attached to a grass-fed type of production for the largest exporter of lamb in the world that exports 1.5 million tons to the world in a market like the one of the EU that is a market that is in need of supply. And I would just conclude with safeguards, because this has been mentioned by many of you. Indeed, the negotiators have negotiated a reinforced bilateral safeguard mechanism that will apply to all FTA concessions in the context of the EU-Australia agreement, including to the sensitive agricultural products subject to a TRQ. I've been asked to provide volumes trigger.
I would be delighted to do it when the time will be ripe to do it. The Commission has promised to table to the co-legislators, to Council and to the Parliament, a dedicated legal instrument in that respect.
So you will get on your table anytime soon a Commission proposal for a Council and European Parliament regulation on the implementation of the safeguard mechanism in the context of EU-Australia. And you will have all the latitude to discuss triggers, volumes, and the mechanism of that safeguard clause. From a negotiating perspective, it was very important to force Australia to have that mechanism available on top of the quotas in the context of the negotiated outcome. And I believe that I've expired my eight minutes, but the Commission will remain and is always available to continue to discuss this file with you. Thank you.
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you, Mr. Serra, and we are in the end of this item, and I would like also to thank our colleagues for this discussion. And we are at the last item of today meeting. It's follow-up on the strategy on fertilizers and rising prices of agri-raw materials.
The committee has organized this hearing to discuss the current situation on the EU fertilizer market and the challenges and opportunities linked to fertilizer and nutrient management in the EU. This discussion comes at a time of significant market volatility and geopolitical uncertainty, both of which raise real concerns about the security of supply of agri-inputs. In this context, it is essential to strengthen the resilience and long-term competitiveness of European agriculture, which is why the committee judged it necessary to hold this exchange with the help of our invited experts. Today our invited experts will share their experience and insights. Among other matters, they will help us assess the current trends shaping in EU fertilizer market and the factors affecting its stability.
They will also evaluate the resilience of fertilizer supply chains, the risk linked to input dependency and the implications of these dynamics for the EU's food security and the competitiveness of European farmers.
Let me at the beginning to welcome here all our guests today. First, Mr. Minchev, sorry, I have to, Mr. Minchev, IMCO Vice-Chair, and our panelists, Mr. Antoine Hoxha, Director General of Fertilizers Europe, Madame Marina Simonova, Head of Fertilizer Analytics from Argus Media, Mr. Max Schulman, Senior Advisor of Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners in MTK Finland, and two more, Mr. Francie Gorman, President of Irish Farmers Association, COPA-COGECA, and Professor Erik Meers, specialized in resource recovery in the bio-based economy in the Department of Green Chemistry and Technology of Ghent University. So, dear guests, welcome here, all of you. And I would like to begin, give the floor Mr. Nikola Minchev from Renew, who is IMCO Vice-Chair. Dear colleague, you have two minutes for your speech.
Nikola Minchev
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So, as we all know, a strong and well-functioning single market is essential to ensuring that fertilizers remain affordable, available, and innovative for Europe's farmers. The recent fertilizer crisis shows that market fragmentation increases costs for manufacturers and ultimately for farmers likewise. This is why we must continue removing unnecessary barriers while maintaining high standards for safety and environmental protection. A positive step in this direction is the recent agreement on the Chemical Omnibus 6 package, which simplifies procedures for authorizing fertilizer product components.
It also modernizes the regulatory framework for new materials and at the same time preserves the comprehensive REACH requirements that protect human health and the environment. In addition, we must find a way for innovation to reach the market more quickly. The future of fertilizers lies not only on conventional products, but more increasingly on biostimulants and organic and bio-based solutions. A predictable, harmonized single market gives businesses the confidence to invest and enables farmers to benefit sooner from more sustainable products.
Ultimately, simplification should never come at the expense of trust. We should aim to reduce unnecessary administrative burdens while preserving strong rules, reliable product information, and confidence in CE marking, which is fundamental to the effective functioning of the single market. Thank you very much, and I'm also looking forward to a fruitful exchange today. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Okay, thank you, colleague. And now I would like to open our first panel, and first will speak Antoine Hoxha, Director General Fertilizers Europe. So, Mr. Director, you have seven minutes for your presentation. Welcome, please.
Antoine Hoxha
Thank you, Madam Chair, for your invitation, and good afternoon to everyone. I want to start today with two numbers. First is a reminder that mineral fertilizer represent today 50% of our food. And this 50%, it's not Antoine saying it, it's a scientific fact, it's Nature magazine.
And of course, this is nothing new to this committee, but it's important to keep repeating it because, unfortunately, many people in this town think that food comes from the supermarket. The second number is 70%. Historically, 70% of the EU fertilizer needs in mineral fertilizers has been provided by the European industry. In the recent years, we have seen imports increasing from 30 to 45%. And this is not good.
It's not good for European industry, it's not good for farmers either, because we are really in a symbiosis, we're part of the same value chain. When it comes to fertilizer prices, I will leave it to Marina to go much more in depth about, but I want to emphasize that fertilizers are global commodities. And the price is being set by two drivers. It is the gas price and it is the global supply and demand. As simple as that.
And in the Hormuz crisis, we had actually a combination of the two effects.
There was shortage of urea in the global market because urea was trapped inside and there was also shortage of natural gas. And even in such a situation, because EU has a domestic industry, a strong domestic industry, I must say, we didn't have shortage of fertilizers for the 2026 season. While other parts of the world, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Asia globally, they had shortages, much more difficult situation for their farmers and their food production. So having a local domestic industry is a stabilizer. Now, I want to also bring another point to your attention.
Many times recycling of nutrients is presented as the panacea. We just will recycle more and there will be a point that there is no more need for mineral fertilizers. And here actually, it's important to understand that mineral fertilizers and organic, they are complementary. You can see in that graph, the first column is the situation today.
Almost half of the nitrogen that is being used in European agriculture comes from recycled manure and other stream. So it's not something new. And of course we should recycle more. But if we look at the what is the potential for this recycling in the short term with the current technologies and again it's a study from University of Wageningen only 3% we can replace of mineral fertilizers. And even if we develop other technologies and we should develop other technologies the potential for replacement is limited to 33% the long term theoretical potential.
So what is the conclusion of this is that we will always need to have hand in hand organic fertilizers and mineral fertilizers as a top up. That's important to keep in mind. Now what is the vision of the European fertilizer industry for the future? There is no doubt the future is decarbonization. That's very clear point.
What is needed is what comes as a question is what do we need to have decarbonization without having deindustrialization? And first, we need a level playing field. And it means among others, a CBAM that is strong and waterproof. Second, we need to have a realistic decarbonization pathway that balances speed and affordability of fertilizers at the same time. And the third important point is we need to develop lead markets for decarbonized products.
Decarbonized products are more expensive and today farmers cannot afford them. We need to spread the cost in the whole food chain, not just on farmers' shoulders. The truth is that decarbonization is very expensive. And as I said, the question is who is going to pay for that? And in the today's legislative framework, it is the farmers that will have to pay.
If we keep legislation as it is today, what is going to happen? ETS free allocations are going to be phased out in 2034 and that brings urea price increase by 60%.
I think it's huge. There is another piece of legislation, RED, Renewables Directive. RED wants to force industry to decarbonize using one single technology, renewables, the most expensive one. It basically says one size has to fit all, from south of Spain to Czechia to Sweden. And of course, from a technical point of view, it's doable, but what is the net result?
Prices of fertilizers would increase hugely to an unbearable level. And we really as fertilizer industry think these things have to change if we want to have affordable fertilizers for our farmers. And this is why we need to work all together, industry with farmers, with Commission, with the Parliament, to find out solutions where we take into account the EU autonomy, decarbonization, but also affordability. I will stop here, but I'm looking forward to the discussion.
Thank you for your attention.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Heisza. And now I would like to give the floor again for seven minutes to Marina Simonova, please. The floor is yours.
Marina Simonova
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. If I could get my slides on the screen, please. So in my presentation today, I would like really to give you a little bit of a global context when we think about the European fertilizer affordability and fertilizer availability. So I will take you through from the upstream to downstream value chain and we will discuss two what questions: what determines availability of fertilizers and what drives fertilizer affordability and price volatility.
And then we will also answer two questions: why is Europe dependent on the global fertilizer supply chain and why increasingly geopolitical disruptions outside this region are having an impact on the fertilizer availability and affordability for the European farmer. What also I want to highlight is that before we start even thinking about fertilizer products, you can see if you move here from left to right on this slide, you can see...
Speaker 47
Madam, please, if you can slow down because interpreters cannot interpret you.
Marina Simonova
Apologies. Apologies.
So on this slide, you can see you are looking at the fertilizer value chain from upstream natural gas and oil to downstream. And it's really the production of different products, commodities such as natural gas, oil, metals, chemicals, and minerals such as phosphate rock or potash ore that determines availability of the fertilizers that feed into the agribusiness value chain. But at the same time, what is also often overlooked is that the same fertilizer products produced at the same manufacturing sites, they're also playing an important role in the global macroeconomic industrial value chain. As you can see here, they play an important role in the mining, metals industry, water treatment, construction, furniture production. So when we think about strategic autonomy of a given region or country, we should not be forgetting about these elements as well.
From the global supply perspective, Europe is a relatively small player. As you can see here on the dark blue bars at the bottom, it's EU-27's share in the production of different fertilizers and fertilizer raw materials, which varies between 2 to 7% except for the nitrates products. But at the same time, Europe has this mature domestic fertilizer industry. The problem is that the cost of production is very high, especially when we talk about nitrogen products.
And domestic production is also not sufficient to meet European fertilizer demand. On the one hand, it's great to have local production because it ensures security of supply and availability, as Antoine has mentioned, when major disruptions happen outside Europe, there is this access to domestic production. It's also about shorter supply chain to the farmer, because there is one thing to get the product from a factory in Egypt and there is one thing to get a product from a factory in the Netherlands, for instance. And typically, European produced fertilizers are more energy efficient and they have lower carbon footprint. But this region has been really challenged.
As you can see on the chart at the bottom right, European ammonia production, which is a precursor to nitrogen fertilizers, has been in decline because of high energy prices. But production in other parts of the world, low-cost parts of the world, like Middle East and Russia, has been increasing. So when we think about, like, the key drivers behind the volatility of the fertilizer prices, here you're looking at the annual price trend for the past five, six years. And you can see that prices are very volatile.
They are driven by a complexity of drivers, and prices typically respond to a number of factors, including natural gas, both cost and availability, supply-demand balances, trade barriers, geopolitics, but also crop prices. If you look on the middle chart in particular, you will see weekly prices of ammonia and natural gas, and you can see how volatile and extreme the peaks and troughs can be, which are also then feeding into the overall final cost and delivered price of the fertilizers to the farmer. But what we also should remember is that European Union as a block, as a region, is one of the major importers of fertilizers in the international market. So you can see it's one of the top largest fertilizer importers globally after Brazil, India, US. And of course that means that the European buyers, they are competing with other regions in the international sourcing of fertilizers.
And it is really this exposure to the international fertilizer procurement that also determines fertilizer price patterns for the European Union farmers. And on the top right, I'm just providing already an example indicating the global rankings of urea exporters, phosphate exporters, potash exporters, and marking those trade partners that Europe already sources from.
And you can see Europe already secures fertilizers from some of the largest fertilizer exporters globally, which are typically low-cost producers. But in my last concluding slide, really what I want to highlight again, just to put a little bit of context and some numbers behind this current crisis that the global fertilizer market is going through. So the two stories of affordability and availability of the fertilizers are not only an issue for the European farmers. We are seeing this across the globe that the fertilizer availability is disrupted and fertilizer prices have been high because of the magnitude of the supply disruptions in the Middle East region as the conflict continues to unveil and the Strait of Hormuz is still disrupted. So you can see that this region in the Middle East supplies over 60 million tons of the fertilizers to the international market and relies on the Strait of Hormuz to get that product to the farmers globally.
And some products in particular, if you look at sulfur, that's 50% of the globally sulfur that sits in that region. And this product is actually a feedstock for the production of phosphate fertilizers.
So we have seen markets responding with demand destruction or demand deferral globally, and there has been different response depending on the supply situation in the key importing markets. So I would like to conclude here and thank you very much for your attention.
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you very much, Madame, and now I would like to open this discussion for our coordinators. You have two minutes each, and Herbert Dorfmann is first. Please, Herbert.
Herbert Dorfmann
Ja, herzlichen Dank, Frau Vorsitzende, und danke den Referenten, war wirklich interessant. Ich glaube, man muss, wenn man die Krise der letzten Monate anschaut, den Stickstoffdünger ein bisschen unterscheiden von den anderen zwei, weil Stickstoffdünger ja de facto Energie ist. Also die Produktionskosten von Stickstoffdünger sind natürlich Energiekosten und sonst gar nichts, der Rest ist ja Luft oder Stickstoff aus der Luft. Und entsprechend ist natürlich der Einfluss der Energiepreise auf den Harnstoffpreis sehr hoch. Aber ich bin ein bisschen provoziert worden, Herr Hoxha, von Ihren Ausführungen.
Ich verstehe natürlich, ich verstehe natürlich, dass aus Sicht der europäischen Industrie ein CBAM interessant wäre oder interessant ist.
Aber die Frage ist, was sind die Auswirkungen eines funktionierenden CBAMs auf die Landwirtschaft? Und Sie haben gesagt, man muss dann die Mehrkosten auf die gesamte Kette aufteilen. Sie haben da die Industrie nicht genannt. Also wenn ich mir die Zahlen der Industrie anschaue in den letzten Monaten, dann ist es, sage ich mal ein bisschen provokanter, der Industrie besser gegangen als den Bauern, weil die Industrie hat in dieser Zeit der Krise, die großen Hersteller in Europa haben ganz ordentliche Gewinne gemacht in den letzten Monaten. Das ist nicht so, dass die nicht ordentlich verdient hätten.
Also sie haben so ähnlich zugeschlagen wie die Ölindustrie auch in dieser Zeit der Krise. Aber glauben Sie wirklich, dass ein Konsument, wenn er hier in den Supermarkt geht in Brüssel, bereit ist, auch nur einen Cent mehr für ein Produkt zu bezahlen, nur weil er weiß, dass das mit einem Dünger produziert worden ist, der dekarbonisiert ist? Das glaube ich ist eine Annahme, die ganz einfach nicht funktioniert. Und wenn der Düngerpreis höher ist, natürlich bleiben die höheren Kosten am Ende am Bauern hängen. Wo sollen sie sonst hängen bleiben?
Der Konsument ist nicht bereit dafür zu bezahlen, weil er es auch nicht versteht. Also wenn ich dem Konsumenten hier auf dem Platz draußen sage, was ist ein dekarbonisierter Dünger, dann wird er mich blöd anschauen, zumindest 99 Prozent der Konsumenten.
Die verstehen das nicht, das ist ihnen auch egal. Und deswegen glaube ich, muss man dann schon, wenn man diesen Weg der Dekarbonisierung sehr wohl gehen will, dann muss man sich wirklich überlegen, was bedeutet das für unsere Wettbewerbsfähigkeit in Europa, in natürlich für Ihre Industrie, und natürlich verteidigen Sie das, es ist ist die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit dann besser gegeben. Für die Bäuerinnen und Bauern habe ich so das Gefühl, das wird die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit nicht beflügeln, ganz im Gegenteil.
Eric Sargiacomo
Merci Madame la Présidente et merci beaucoup à nos deux intervenants qui nous ont fait une démonstration. Et c'est vrai que ça nous amène forcément des éléments de débat, surtout à un moment où on vient de nous annoncer que le détroit d'Ormuz était de nouveau refermé, il s'était rouvert, il avait été fermé. Et on comprend bien qu'on est rentré dans une phase en fait de conflit sur cette zone stratégique pour nous de long terme. C'est pas simplement sporadique et conjoncturel. Donc il faut que l'on pense notre modèle par rapport à ça.
Et je crois qu'il est important aussi de rappeler une chose c'est qu'il n'y a pas d'un côté la politique et de l'autre côté l'économie. Ça ne marche pas comme cela, on le voit très bien dans la crise en question surtout lorsque ça vient toucher de plein fouet la production alimentaire comme vous l'avez très bien montré dans le premier slide de votre démonstration. J'ai bien noté aussi votre positionnement sur la volonté d'avoir une taxe carbone aux frontières forte. Je crois qu'il est effectivement important de garder notre objectif de long terme à savoir protéger nos industries et notre marché de la concurrence déloyale pour que vous puissiez augmenter votre production d'engrais azotés sur le sol européen. Toutefois, je crois que l'élément stratégique ne doit pas également oublier certains éléments conjoncturels et mon collègue Dorfmann l'a dit lorsque que ce soit avec l'inflation alimentaire d'un côté ou l'augmentation des coûts des intrants pour les agriculteurs donc l'augmentation des prix alimentaires pour les consommateurs, on a un effet immédiat qui peut être extrêmement déstabilisateur pour l'ensemble de nos pays, l'ensemble de l'Union européenne pas simplement d'un point de vue d'ailleurs je vais dire économique et social mais également politique pour un certain nombre de pays.
Votre industrie est par définition une industrie lourde. Pour moi, il est important que vous puissiez bénéficier de fonds européens, notamment du fonds de compétitivité pour améliorer vos capacités de production puisqu'on veut être plus résilients, on veut être plus indépendants. Et je pense que si on veut avoir une meilleure sécurité alimentaire, souveraineté alimentaire, on a besoin d'investir, besoin d'investir dans l'outil, mais aussi besoin d'investir aussi dans notre capacité de stockage parce que tout ce qui permettra de lutter contre la volatilité des prix, qui est pour moi vraiment le poison de cette relation que nous connaissons actuellement à l'échelle internationale et pour nos producteurs et pour nos consommateurs et pour les industriels que vous êtes, je pense qu'il y a un véritable enjeu. Alors moi j'aurais deux questions. Dans quelle mesure le secteur des engrais pourrait-il bénéficier du fonds européen de compétitivité pour améliorer sa résilience et voilà, renforcer les infrastructures ?
Et après, qu'attendez-vous de la révision de la directive sur le stockage du pétrole et des autres combustibles, en particulier le gaz, qui est la matière première, parce que si on stocke pas des engrais, on peut stocker le gaz aussi ?
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you, Eric. And now Gilles Penelle is not there. I don't know, somebody from Patriots wants to take the floor? No. Okay, ECR, Carlo Fidanza.
Carlo, please.
Carlo Fidanza
Sì grazie presidente, benvenuto agli ospiti. Dunque un passaggio molto interessante è quello che ha riguardato i costi derivanti da ETS e l'interazione con il CBAM. Siamo in attesa a giorni della nuova proposta della Commissione Europea sulla revisione di ETS. Sarei interessato a sapere qual è stata la proposta avanzata da Fertilizers Europe alla Commissione Europea sullo specifico tema di ETS e come vedete appunto un'interazione virtuosa con CBAM al fine di abbassare i costi di produzione e rendere appunto, come giustamente ricordava il dottor Oksza, il diciamo l'atterraggio in termini di decarbonizzazione più morbido e meno impattante sull'industria e sulla filiera nel complesso.
Seconda domanda, mi ricollego a quello che accennava il collega Sergio-Gomo sulle ECF e lo allargherei al tema di Horizon, cioè cosa ci dobbiamo aspettare dal punto di vista dell'industria per quanto riguarda la ricerca per sviluppare prodotti che possano da un lato contribuire a una maggiore autonomia strategica, dall'altro anche andare incontro alle prescrizioni che comunque abbiamo nel nostro quadro regolatorio vigente. Penso alla direttiva nitrati e altre normative che abbiamo che sicuramente avrebbero bisogno di essere aggiornate e riviste dopo tanti anni, ma che probabilmente possiamo superare anche attraverso la, diciamo, la ricerca applicata e un ruolo proattivo del settore privato.
Elsi Katainen
Thank you, Chair, and thank you for panelists for your presentation. It is obvious that the fertilizer sector is under the pressure and unfortunately Commission's fertilizer strategy didn't give much answers to this acute crisis, at least some solutions for longer term. It relies strongly on the fossil-based input outside Europe and latest development all over the world which are affecting the sector don't help this situation. There is urgent need for new innovations and possibilities to increase the European own fertilizer production.
More domestic production is needed as well as bio-based alternatives. How do you see and how does the fertilizer sector see that what kind of actions are needed from the legislative framework for enhancing the security of supply and strategic autonomy in Europe? There was some good initiatives in the fertilizer action plan on the long-term. In addition on the analytics, it is interesting to see what kind of things has been taken into account on calculation. How do you see the effect all over the world?
Is there other countries or continents which are also suffering from the situation and what kind of affection is there to our European farmers? Thank you.
Thomas Waitz
Yeah, thank you, Chair. First of all, I have to share that I'm pretty irritated that we give the chief lobbyist of the fertilizer industry that kind of stage here because, I mean, lobbying also for industry is legitimate, but with 7 to 800,000 euros budget per year and your main, one of your main members, Yara, spending 1.5 million a year, having six lobbyists here in the house, you're also representing a company called Agrofert of the Babiš family, one of the biggest recipients of agriculture money.
However, I find this really irritating. But okay, now that we have you here, I mean, you also used two-third of your time for pure lobby intervention without really talking on the topic. And just to put a few things right that you have been saying. You have been saying that you managed to not have a shortage for 2026. Well, I can tell you as a farmer, we were buying our fertilizer for this season long before the Strait of Hormuz was closed, and the actual problem now occurs for the summer, now for the autumn, for the winter, and for next year, so the stuff we're buying now.
So you can prove now that you can prevent a shortage, so this is not something you have done in the past. And second, I want to tell you that energy prices in Europe come with merit order. And merit order prices are oriented on the price of gas electricity that is produced. That is defining the price of electricity because the cheapest electricity that we have on the market comes from renewables, and by the way, it's not one technology, but it's a whole potpourri of technologies that are called renewables, but maybe I can educate you on that a bit later. What I actually want to talk about is windfall profits.
Your companies have been doing windfall profits.
I can just tell you from Yara they have increased their profitability from 395 million in the first quarter of 25 to 327 million profit in the first quarter of 26. Your companies are earning well on the back of us farmers and on the back of consumers. And now you know our farmers are in trouble. Are we now intending to finance your maximum windfall profits with taxpayers' money? I know and this is also a question to Madame Simonova.
You're watching the global developments. I mean there is court cases in US for building cartels. There's also European institutions looking into this for abusing a market situation for maximizing profits. Can you please comment on that reality and what that does to our fertilizer prices? Thank you very much.
Luke Ming Flanagan
Thank you very much. I'd like to think that everyone who comes in here and everyone who's elected to this place has the interest of farmers at heart but with the greatest respect to the speaker from the fertilizer industry and it is your job. Your job is what is best for you not for farmers. What's the best way for you to make profits etc. So I think that should be you should shout that out loud because the more money you make the more successful you are.
That doesn't necessarily mean farmers are going to do well out of it.
And it'd be good to get an answer on windfall profits. And do you think this money should actually, given that you're supposedly so concerned about farmers, shouldn't this money be going back to farmers? And I hear this cost of decarbonization, and it sounds massive, and I'm sure it will be massive. But have any of you got any figures on the cost of not going down the road of decarbonization? Because we're actually there in the place we are now because we have made ourselves dependent on, let's call a spade a spade here, we've made ourselves dependent on feeding our children on lunatics.
Basically, we're dependent on people like Donald Trump, we're dependent on a war in the Middle East not occurring, like it's like hoping it won't rain in Ireland that there won't be war the way things are.
So from the point of view of decarbonization, what is the cost, the long-term cost of not actually doing that? And in relation to one particular graph that you put up about how far we could go with organic fertilizers, I'm just wondering is there a breakdown on a country-by-country basis on that? Let's say for example Ireland, the amount of we produce a phenomenal amount of animal manure. A country that has the level of beef production and dairy production like Ireland, what sort of a level of autonomy could we get to with fertilizer production? But to me, yes, it would be expensive, massively expensive to decarbonize.
But let's get real here. We need to look at the cost of not decarbonizing. And we know the cost of that, we'll all end up dead.
Ivan David
Lékařství má takovou pěknou zásadu, a sice především neškodit. Druhá taková zásada je, že je potřeba řešit příčiny a nikoli následky.
No a je typické pro Evropskou komisi, že se zabývá následky, řeší následky, nezabývá se příčinami, které často souvisí s vlastní politikou Evropské unie. Když se podíváme na růst cen hnojiv, tak to mimo jiné tedy souvisí se snahou tedy zlikvidovat Rusko, tedy pomocí sankcí, což vedlo k nárůstu nákladů na energie. Další záležitostí byla potom snaha podpořit domácí průmysl tím, že se zvýší cla, což samozřejmě vede k nárůstu cen produktů a poškozuje to dále zemědělce. No a teď máme situaci s Hormuzem, kde ten problém spočívá ve snaze pomoci Izraeli zlikvidovat Írán jako jako lokální velmoc. No a samozřejmě ten důsledek je naprosto zřejmý a zase je to zase to vychází tedy z politiky, která souvisí s naším klíčovým partnerem za oceánem.
A pokud se jedná o snahy zlepšit tu situaci, já bych se tady chtěl zeptat v případě realokace z přímých plateb. Je potřeba vyjasnit, z jakých intervencí by byly prostředky odebrány a jaký by to mělo dopad na jednotlivé sazby. Současně upozorňujeme, že bez těchto informací nelze posoudit, zda by podpora pokryla alespoň část zvýšených nákladů a jaké by byly dopady na různé typy podniků. To je prostě ta část, kdy už je snaha nějakým způsobem tedy řešit problém.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay, thank you very much. And now I open the catch-the-eye. And I would like to inform you, you have one minute each, dear colleagues. So first, Madame Grapini.
Maria Grapini
Mulțumesc foarte mult. Vă mulțumesc pentru prezentări, poate ar fi bine să le primim și noi pentru că au fost foarte multe detalii. Eu sunt și vicepreședinta Comisiei pentru piața internă și sunt și în Comisia pentru agricultură. Domnul Hojsma, ați spus între altele cum ajungem la decarbonizare fără eliminarea industriei. Să știți că eu sunt industriaș și țin la industrie și fără industrie Uniunea Europeană nu va avea nicio putere în lume.
Problema este într-adevăr, această întrebare este esențială. Cum facem decarbonizarea fără a elimina industria?
Speaker 56
Can you please slow down a little bit because interpreters cannot interpret you?
Maria Grapini
Așadar, în țara mea, de exemplu, în România, s-a închis Azomureș, n-a mai funcționat. Dumneavoastră, doamna Simonova, ați spus în același timp că în Uniunea Europeană producem mai puțin decât este nevoie. Deci depindem de importuri. Păi haideți să rezolvăm ecuația asta. Este foarte important să ne punem la aceeași masă industriașii cu fermierii, cu necesarul, că ați spus că-s două surse de creștere a prețului: pe de o parte cererea-oferta și de pe de altă parte prețurile la energie și la gaz.
Okay.
Atunci nu trebuie să punem nici în sarcina fermierilor. Eu nu sunt de acord cu ce-au spus colegii. Nu puteți să închideți dumneavoastră industria, că avem nevoie să producem în Uniunea Europeană. Deci eu cred că dumneavoastră, împreună cu noi, cu Comisia, cu fermierii, trebuie să găsim rezolvarea acestei situații: decarbonizare fără să distrugem industria.
Martin Häusling
Ja, die Argumente der fossilen Ölindustrie und der Gasindustrie und Ihre Argumente sind ja deckungsgleich. Keine Dekarbonisierung, ganz langsam, keine erneuerbaren Energien. Aber was sie gemeinsam haben, ist auch: Sie haben sich in der Krise die Taschen voll gemacht. Allein Yara 896 Millionen Gewinn im ersten Quartal, Kali und Salz 750 Millionen Gewinnerwartung. Sie haben an der Krise profitiert und die Landwirte leiden drunter.
Brauchen wir überhaupt diese Mengen an fossilen Dünger? Wir haben doch in Europa vielerorts ein Problem mit Überdüngung. Die Nitratrichtlinie wurde ja angesprochen, die Kommission will sie ja scheinbar aufweichen. Aber wir haben eine Überdüngung zum Beispiel in der Ostsee. Wir haben in 20 Prozent der Grundwasserversorgung in Deutschland mehr als 50 Milligramm Nitrat.
Aber noch was anderes: Wir haben doch ganz andere Probleme noch.
Das sind doch Probleme, die Sie vollkommen ausklammern. Wir haben einen zusätzlichen Import von Futtermitteln aus zum Beispiel Südamerika und den USA über Soja, das rechnen Sie gar nicht ein. Also wir sind hier eigentlich überversorgt. Und allein die Stickstoffproduktion trägt über 2 Prozent zum globalen CO2-Ausstoß bei. Das verschweigen Sie alles.
Sie wollen so weitermachen wie bisher, aber damit kommen wir tatsächlich zu dem Problem, wir können nicht weiter mit fossiler Energie Mengen an Stickstoff und anderen Düngern erzeugen, das wird langfristig nicht gehen. Und Sie nennen hier überhaupt keine Alternativen, sondern Sie wollen weitermachen wie bisher. Und das geht so nicht.
Céline Imart
Merci Présidente, merci aux intervenants.
Monsieur Waitz du groupe des Verts, il est honteux de stigmatiser des lobbies qui pourraient intervenir en COMAGRI. Il faudrait priver de parole dans un débat sur les engrais les principales parties prenantes sur les engrais qui sont ceux qui les produisent. Alors que, enfin moi je ne comprends pas, nous avons des parties prenantes, eux qui publient leurs comptes et qui produisent quelque chose, contrairement à de nombreux lobbies que nous avons déjà reçus ici, comme des ONG vertes, qui elles ne publient pas leurs comptes et qui de surcroît ne produisent rien, si ce n'est gagner de l'argent en critiquant ceux qui produisent. Donc c'est atterrant d'entendre de telles accusations à la gauche de cet hémicycle et d'entendre aussi que c'est un grave problème de gagner de l'argent pour des gens qui produisent. Je m'adresse maintenant aux producteurs d'engrais avec une question : comment allez-vous prendre votre part de responsabilité dans l'augmentation de nos capacités de production ?
Parce que c'est une question de souveraineté alimentaire pour nous. Les industriels des engrais s'étaient engagés lors de l'adoption du MACF sur les engrais lors du dernier mandat à accroître les capacités de production européennes, et je suis au regret de dire que vous n'avez pas été au rendez-vous. L'autonomie stratégique ne se décrète pas dans un document. Elle se construit avec des capacités industrielles, avec des investissements et avec une vision de long terme. Alors cessons de courir derrière les urgences avec une trousse de secours à la main, il faut enfin nous attaquer aux racines du problème.
Merci.
Daniel Buda
Stimați colegi, plecăm de la o realitate care nu poate să fie ignorată. Nu putem face agricultură fără îngrășăminte chimice. Evident că acestea trebuie să fie la un nivel adecvat din perspectiva prețului și în același timp să fie în cantități suficiente. Se pune însă o întrebare și n-aș vrea s-o pun în mod retoric legat de ceea ce înseamnă industria de îngrășăminte de la nivelul Uniunii Europene. Eu vin din România.
Da, am avut fabrici de îngrășăminte și avem fabrici de îngrășăminte, Azomureș, Nitramonia Făgăraș și alte astfel de structuri. Și atunci se pune întrebarea firească: de ce nu le ținem aceste structuri în viață? Pentru că nu vom putea din nou să fim în bătaia vântului, ce-a dorit Trump sau orice alt președinte, n-are importanță până la urmă în afara Uniunii Europene, câtă vreme noi avem o infrastructură care este în măsură să producă îngrășăminte la un nivel suficient pentru Uniunea Europeană. Întrebarea mea către dumneavoastră: de ce aveți nevoie de la noi, de la Comisia Europeană, pentru a putea consolida această industrie în așa fel încât să nu mai fim dependenți de importuri din țările terțe? Pentru că până la urmă despre asta vorbim: cum ne asigurăm această independență câtă vreme noi avem capacitatea de a produce.
Nu este aceeași situație la soia, de exemplu, că n-o putem produce în Uniunea Europeană, trebuie s-o importăm din țările terțe. Dar această componentă a îngrășămintelor chimice poate să fie satisfăcută pe plan intern.
Întrebarea mea către dumneavoastră: de ce nu facem acest lucru sau de ce avem nevoie să facem pentru a putea asigura această chestiune? Mulțumesc.
Benoit Cassart
Merci, Madame la Présidente. Si j'ai bien compris, pour développer durablement l'industrie européenne des fertilisants, deux conditions sont nécessaires. Un, plus de protection de l'industrie via des mécanismes comme par exemple le CBAM, et deux, la possibilité pour l'industrie de vendre les engrais, puisqu'on est dans un marché plus protégé, plus cher aux agriculteurs. Il y a quelques minutes, nous avons eu un débat sur l'accord commercial avec l'Australie. On sait qu'avec tous ces accords commerciaux, les prix des denrées agricoles en Europe sont au niveau du prix mondial.
Comment voulez-vous que les agriculteurs européens paient plus cher tous leurs intrants, comme les fertilisants, l'énergie ou leur matériel, alors que d'un autre côté, ils ont des prix de vente qui sont au niveau du marché mondial? Voilà exactement la raison pour laquelle on est dans un problème où on ne trouve pas de solution.
C'est ce mécanisme de base qu'il faut vraiment arrêter. Merci.
Ciaran Mullooly
Thank you, Chair. Chair, whatever about the margin of profit that's going on here with fertilizers and the companies involved, today's presentation highlighted one important fact, and that the regions that had strategic stockpiles in place did not experience the same level of price increases as those without them. And that's a lesson I think we have to learn here. We've already recognized the importance of strategic reserves when it comes to things like oil and energy. Fertilizer is not just another input, I believe it's essential to food production and therefore ultimately to food security.
So recent years have shown how quickly geopolitical events can disrupt supply chains and drive prices beyond the reach of farmers. So I believe a European strategic fertilizer reserve would strengthen resilience and stabilize the markets during times of crisis and help safeguard food production across the Union. So if we're really serious about food production and food security, then we must also be serious about securing the inputs that make food production possible. So I ask our panel, would they be in favor of a proper strategic reserve being built up?
Luis-Vicențiu Lazarus
Thank you, and the last is Mr. Lazarius, please, the floor is yours.
Dragi colegi, o să fac o analogie absolut neașteptată. Știți că am ridicat problema cu ceva timp în urmă în această comisie a noastră de agricultură, că România, fermierul român, ar fi într-o postură de faliment, cel puțin pe linia zootehniei, a laptelui și a creșterii animalelor. În principiu, încearcă să vândă laptele măcar cu cât îl produce. Îl vinde cu 30 de cenți, deși îl produce cu 50 de cenți. În aceste condiții, întrebam cum e posibil ca lanțurile de hipermarket să vândă laptele cu 2 până la 3 euro?
Când discutăm de îngrășăminte, avem o problemă. România este o țară bogată. România avea gaze, România avea combinate. Și am să vă citesc aici cinci orașe: Slobozia, Piatra Neamț, Bacău, Turnu Măgurele și Făgăraș. Toate aceste cinci orașe au avut combinate care produceau îngrășăminte.
Știți ce s-a întâmplat cu aceste cinci combinate? Sunt toate închise. Aparțineau unui singur om. Se numește Ioan Niculae.
Nu mai are niciun interes astăzi, după ce i-au închis combinatele și l-au băgat în pușcărie. Poate că n-ar fi rău ca pe lângă domnii care își fac lobby astăzi în comisia noastră să chemați și pe cineva care a fost pățit cu toate aceste lucruri să vă explice de ce România, care are gaze și care avea atâtea combinate, nu a fost lăsată să producă până la urmă îngrășăminte chimice. Și după aceea să vă întrebați la nivel european de ce suntem în situația în care suntem și de ce avem acest preț la îngrășăminte.
Veronika Vrecionová
I'm sorry colleague, you know you are out of the time. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And now let's go back to our panelist, Mr. Antoine Hoxha, you have just now four minutes for your replies.
Antoine Hoxha
Well, four minutes is a challenge, but I'll try to give some elements and then I would also go to talk to you one by one if we want to go more in details. First, on what Mr. Dorfmann was saying, yes, fertilizers is energy and we are in favor of CBAM, but it's clear that CBAM has an effect of farmer farm economics. So what we are saying is revenues of CBAM should go back to farmers in the short term.
This is our proposal. And also our proposal to the Commission is to say keep free allocations at the level that they are today, don't decrease them, because any decrease of free allocation, immediately one euro of free allocation less for industry is one euro that the farmer has to pay. So this is how we see things. To Mr. De Castro, how to, well, I agree industry needs to be protected in terms of storage. I think it's much easier actually, as you mentioned, to store gas than to store finished fertilizers.
If we have enough storage of gas, industry can transform it immediately in fertilizers, so probably that's the best situation, but it's something we would like to discuss more in detail. And competitiveness funds, yes, industry needs support because decarbonization, and by the way to the Greens, we are in favor of decarbonization. There is no doubt about that.
Decarbonization is the future. The question is which technology. And we need to keep all technologies available if we want to keep the price, the cost down. If you say it's only one technology, then it's giving a monopoly, de facto monopoly to someone. And that one will make money, not farmers.
We need support, industry needs support, competitiveness fund you've mentioned. It's not enough. We need to have a market. You can support an industry, but you cannot have your business plan for the next 20 years to depend on public support. Simply it doesn't work.
To Mr. Fidanza, I've answered, we want to keep the free allocations. That's our view for ETS. And of course research. There are already many things that exist today in the laboratories that needs to reach the or in universities that needs to reach the farmers and be implemented. So we don't need to reinvent things.
We need to implement things. And I'm looking... I will maybe I will leave to Marina when it comes to more geopolitical situation and what is the effect on price. Cost of not decarbonizing. It's not an option.
It's not an option. Decarbonization will happen. But as Mrs. Grapini, Madame Grapini was saying, how to do that without shutting down the plants? And this is why I put in my slides the map of Europe with all those dots. We want those dots to continue and maybe even more, not to depend on Mr. Putin and not to depend on Mr. Trump how he wakes up in the morning.
We need more fertilizer plant dots. That doesn't go against reducing fertilizer use. We need to reduce fertilizer losses. The plants will need always the same quantity on tons of nutrients. The problem is that today from 100 kilos of fertilizers that are used, 40% are lost.
And we are the best in the world.
In the world they lose 60%. But again this and this 40% we have to cut down. So we are in favor of a better nutrient use efficiency. We are in favor of nutrient management plans. We're waiting from Commission actually since years this to be put in place.
We have to cut losses, not cut what the plant receives. And I very much Azomureș is one of our member companies. They are in very difficult situation. I fully understand the Romanian situation. And yeah, that's also what Mr. Buda was saying, how to keep these plants alive.
I will stop here and leave it probably to Marina for other elements.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay, thank you. And now I would like to ask Marina Simonova and you have also four minutes, please.
Marina Simonova
Thank you very much. It looks like there are a lot of things to unpack answering a lot of different comments here. Maybe I'll start by just to conclude the cost of not decarbonization.
I guess for every ton of ammonia produced, we generate about two tons of CO2 if it's gas-based or generate for almost four tons of CO2 if it's coal-based production in China. And as we know, climate change has become one of the biggest challenges for the farmers themselves. So if we are going to continue to stay on the non-decarbonized path, we are going to continue to generate some emissions. The other question, of course, is when we think about emissions is that decarbonization of the fertilizer production addresses scope one and two emissions. But then we also have scope three emissions when fertilizers are applied in the field.
And some of those can also be mitigated through the use of different technologies or like inhibitors and those are already penetrated in the European market. European farmers are one of the most kind of advanced when we think about different different new tools or technologies being used. Regarding regarding maybe domestic domestic industry. So as we discussed and as I have shown on my slides, natural gas accounts for about 70 to 80% of the nitrogen fertilizer production cost.
The problem that Europe faces is that not only this volatility throughout the year, like within the year, when we think also about seasonality when fertilizers are needed, but the fact that there is no level playing field globally. So gas price in Europe today is roughly about 15 to 16 dollars per MMBtu, but gas price in places like Russia or Middle East, it's about 2 dollars per MMBtu. So you can see there's huge significant difference in the cost of production straight away. So not surprisingly, of course, European domestic industry has been challenged and there has been closures of ammonia capacity in Europe. So unfortunately at this stage, this is not addressed.
In some places, this gas, those lower gas prices, they are subsidized, like in places like Russia or Middle East, they're fixed for a number, for a certain period, and that's why they're able to maintain those at low levels. But when we think about more domestic production in Europe, we should also remember different types of fertilizers. So nitrogen is really dependent on natural gas cost and gas availability. That's one thing. But the other thing is phosphate fertilizers, which are really linked to where your phosphate rock reserves are, and the largest phosphate rock reserves are in places like Morocco, Russia.
And unfortunately, you really need to have access to your mined resource to be able to produce phosphate fertilizers, or you need to outsource it from those locations. When we think about potash, again, potash is also linked to the mined commodities, like mined mineral potash ore that you need to extract first before you produce granulated potash fertilizers. And again, those places are limited in terms of mineral resource base, the largest being in Canada and again Russia and Belarus. CBAM clearly is a controversial topic and indeed farmers are concerned that there will be an attempt to pass 100% of CBAM cost liability to the end user. But at the same time, if we look at the delivered cost perspective, fertilizers, nitrogen fertilizers delivered into European market, it feels like there is room for margin.
Yes, exactly.
In the long term, when we generate our forecasts, we do not think that passing on 100% of a significant add-on cost is going to be a sustainable way forward. So there will inevitably need to be some kind of adjustment or cost sharing between supplier and the buyer. But it's up to the market how this will be handled. The other challenge that we see, and of course is the increasing number of trade barriers.
And as a result of this Strait of Hormuz, many countries have become very concerned about their availability. Those who had domestic production, they tried to maximize operating rates. Europe was one of those. But you are quite right that the reason why Europe survived the initial kind of start of that crisis because there was a big pre-Sebam fertilizer purchasing wave, so the product was already available in the system, so to speak. So the longer the conflict continues, the more challenging it becomes for the next season, for the next harvests.
And we have seen also countries implementing the trade measures to protect availability. So Russia introduced sulfur export ban, trying to keep sulfur for their own market, for their own phosphate production for exports. China introduced sulfuric acid ban to again keep that product for their own industry. So maybe regarding quickly regarding alternatives, potential alternatives, here we need to isolate short-term and maybe long-term effects. Reserves have been mentioned.
There are places in other parts of the world. China is one of those, as it's the largest population in the world. China and India, these two countries, they already manage a system of reserves and so there are certain kind of reserves fill programs for the producers in those markets.
But in the long run, thinking about alternatives, moving away some production from fossil-based fragile gas systems to renewable-based green ammonia products or decarbonized products is one of the pathways to go. Apologies.
Veronika Vrecionová
I'm sorry. I have interrupted you. So now I would like to ask Maria Aguado Ruiz from DG AGRI and Madame you have six minutes for your statement.
Isabel Ruiz
Okay, thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you very much, honorable members. I think it has been very interesting to listen to the debate and I think you can understand that what we have heard today has been part of the reflection that the Commission has taken when drafting the fertilizer action plan. Because we are in a situation where we need to address a very short-term situation need right now, making sure that farmers have access to affordable fertilizers while at the same time making sure that there is this path to decarbonization and to increasing the strategic autonomy of the EU in producing fertilizers.
Fertilizers which can be of a more fossil character, like the ones we've been discussing, and also fertilizers moving away from this fossil to more bio-based and organic. Of course, this transition can unfortunately not be made from one day to another one. There is a time span that is needed for the industry to adapt, for the regulations to adapt, because we acknowledge that also we need to improve, for instance, the fertilizing market regulation, fertilizing products regulation, sorry, and also for other technologies to develop, so that those lead markets, so that those markets develop and there is also a demand.
And the demand will help the supply. And I think supply and demand are very much interconnected. One don't go without the other. So of course there is a need for more bio-based greener fertilizers. But as many have acknowledged, this type of fertilizers cannot completely substitute fossil fertilizers.
And farmers, when taking decisions, need to make sure that the input they buy has proven its effect and will help get them the yield they need in order for their investment to be profitable. The investment of the farmers, I'm saying, so the money they spend in inputs, in fertilizers. So the fertilizer action plan, I would say, it's a roadmap. I mean, it's not an immediate solution for all the problems we are having, facing today. It sets a path to different actions that need to be taken by every single participant in the value chain in order to increase the economic autonomy strategy of the EU in relation to the production of fertilizers of different types, be them fossil-based and bio-based, organic and so on.
So as you know, I mean, in the fertilizer action plan, we are also looking at, as I said, food affordability.
This is why it's important that the fertilizers are not too expensive because farmers are those who bear most the cost. It's important also to look at the open strategic autonomy and these two challenges cannot be taken separately. We are also looking, one of the key objectives is also to build a better functioning single market for EU-made fertilizers and so we are taking a series of steps in the Commission to improve the regulatory framework for that. And then just to close in relation to what Simona just indicated in relation to what other big producers of fertilizer are doing on the global market, the Commission, the EU is a big advocate in all the international fora, advocating for open markets and for other countries not imposing unnecessary restrictions to the legal order which are not in compliance with international law and WTO.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay, thank you very much, Madam Ruiz. And now I would like to open the second panel. And first I give the floor to Max Schulman from Central Union of Agriculture Producers and Forest Owners. And you have four minutes for your presentation. Please, the floor is yours.
Max SCHULMAN
Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair, honorable members of the European Parliament, Rural Development and Agriculture Committee. I will very fast just go through a little bit the situation how we farmers see it. I have a presentation that if it is possible to get it up there on the screen, it's okay. Otherwise, I think that I will be able to run it through quite nicely.
So I would like to start just by saying I mean thank you to the Commission. Okay, shall we go up there? Okay.
Thank you very much. Yes. No, sorry for the small delay. I'm just going to say and I was saying that I would like to thank you also the Commission for the action plan on fertilizers. I mean, it was very timely to get it, but like we had already from the farmers' side been asking for a strategy from the Commission already for a quite a few years.
It I can just tell that it is better later than not at all. So I mean now we are talking about a good action plan and now we should just here together try to find from there these elements and all the elements that would actually make sure that we as farmers will be able to have affordable fertilizer in our hands also in the future. Let's see if we go forward from here. Yes. Just to tell you very fast and I wanted to bring a cool picture here to make sure that the discussion doesn't get too hot in here, also to cool down a little bit.
You see Finland with all the snow still here the picture is from March and then if it would go down to Spain you would have the growing season fully going. So this is the one thing to remember the common type of a single market it's usually just a dream that we usually face when we talk about policies coming out from the European Union. This is just to make sure that the understanding of how complex the agriculture system and the European Union in it actually is playing the game. Here we see what has happened during the last years. Just to bring it back we already heard about the price and the price development in the previous panel.
Here we can see that already earlier on we had the crisis once the Ukraine war started. We saw that there was a humongous hike in the fertilizer prices with one exception. We also saw the same prices hike happening on our own commodities. Fertilizer went up but so did the grain prices as well. So the farmers had still the possibility to offset the price of fertilizer.
At this moment with the new crisis that we are facing today that's still ongoing the one that still comes and says no the crisis are not there anymore that is not the truth.
I mean, we see that there is still a crisis because of the Hormuz is not open totally. We see that the cereal prices has still not reacted, even if we saw some reaction happening here by the beginning of the week, actually here today and actually also on Friday, when there were some other ships destroyed inside the Sea of Azov. Here you see a little bit what you have already heard. I do not need to go into the production costs. I would just like to highlight the policy and the regulation that we have in place just to make sure that we talk about the same thing when it comes into how to reduce, for instance, bureaucracy, etc.
We have there two things that has been mentioned already, ETS CBAM, I will not go into that, but we also have there anti-dumping measures in place that could have been a short-term measure that could have been taken to maintain and make sure that Europe would have had a safer and a faster possibility to maintain and obtain nitrogen fertilizers, mainly then from the US and also Trinidad Tobago as well. And then for sure, the MFN tariffs that are under discussion for the time being. And the difficult thing is that we are talking about the world market when it comes in here. We have the climate impact that is being discussed when it comes to the use of fertilizer and also to the greening of it and the geopolitics. What can the farmers do?
How do we respond to this? We delay purchasing.
For sure this is not good for the chain. We are getting a lot of blames that you have changed totally the way how you purchase your fertilizers, you put us in the chain in a different situation. Stockpiling, farmers very seldom can do any stockpiling. We do not have the means today. The war chest or the say the farmers' chest is empty.
We have had already three to four bad years behind us. Efficiency, yes we can make sure that we use better the fertilizers we have. That is one thing that we will be doing. Use alternative nutrient solutions, yes that we will come up to here later on. New investments have to be done on farm level as well to do this, but for that you need the access to finance, to finance tools.
Then we also can adjust the cropping systems. Yes, we can cut down in what we grow. Is that something that should be done? That's one of the things that the farmers are also thinking about, but that's a mean that we have. And then for sure also manage all the production costs and the risks.
Just to end here is very important for you. As you know, farming is an old profession but not old-fashioned. We are there also to maintain our own production.
We want to stay competitive, but we also need to make sure that there is farm income and a profitability with it, so that we can invest into the future. Thank you.
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you, Mr. Schulman. And now it's time for your colleague, Mr. Gorman, from Irish Farmers Association. And you have four minutes for your presentation.
Francie GORMAN
Thank you very much, Madam Chairperson. And it's a privilege here to be addressing the Parliament Committee this evening on the fertilizer issue with my colleague from COPA, Max Schulman. Fertilizer to me is no different to any other input that you have at farm level. If I want to go out to farm in the morning, I need land, I need machinery, I need money. I need education.
I need fertilizer. And without fertilizer, we can't function as an industry. It's absolutely essential to everything that we do at farm level. And I think we've seen since 2019 in particular, the spike in fertilizer costs that farmers have had to carry. And output prices have not been maintained at the same pace as that.
And I think the concerns that we have at COPA-COGECA have been amplified by the fact that the European Commission have decided to implement or to put forward a fertilizer action plan. That in itself is an acknowledgement that there's an issue there. And I think that's to be welcomed, to be clear, from our perspective. But it doesn't provide, I think, the answers that we need.
And at the moment fertilizer is just too expensive. And what can we do in Europe to try and improve that? Well certainly we've taken the view all along and our assessment will go through the different areas of the fertilizer plan, but CBAM is a huge issue for us. And the idea that we're going to pay a CBAM tax that ultimately farmers will pay for that tax does not sit well with us. If we can't afford it, it shouldn't be implemented.
Full stop, there should be a suspension of CBAM until such a point in time that we are able to afford it as farmers. And we're not against the decarbonization of the European fertilizer industry. I wouldn't want anyone to think that for a second. We are rightly up for the challenge for that. But I think it's something that has to be seen in a much longer term context.
The idea that this is going to be achieved by the implementation of a CBAM tax almost immediately is folly. I understand and I'd have to stand it up, but almost 50% of the world's population are dependent on food produced through nitrogen fertilizer.
So the idea in the morning that we can move to something different, to move to bio-fertilizer is not going to happen without having huge consequences on the provision of food and the cost of food for population in general. But we do need to see a bio-fertilizer industry developed in Europe, but that's going to take time. And it's going to take innovation, it's going to take money. And that isn't on the table at the moment to do that. But we do need that and we need to develop it in tandem with also a chemical fertilizer industry that's decarbonized.
And how we can get there and provide fertilizer for farmers at an affordable rate is the question that we have to answer. I think what the European Commission have done in terms of the agricultural reserve and providing the 540 million is really welcome. And I would like to see that co-funded to the maximum by every country in Europe to give every farmer, irrespective of where they're from, the opportunity to be able to afford fertilizer on an equal basis.
The issue we have with it is that it's not going to be a Europe-wide response because some countries are going to fund it to different levels than others. And it takes away the common approach that we would like to see, whether it's on fertilizer or on CAP, the common approach that underpins the European Union. It dilutes that, and that's an issue. I think the flexibilities around the CAP, any money that comes in at any time extra is welcome. But essentially this is money that we're going to get either ways.
So we're being asked to pay for this crisis out of our own pockets, money that we're already guaranteed to receive. And I think the European Union have to try and see how they can reduce the cost of fertilizer to farmers, because if the money is not going to be put in place to do that, they have to work it the other way. I think going back to CBAM, CBAM is going to implement a cost of almost 12 billion euro on farmers over the next seven years. That's unsustainable. We can't do that.
And I think it's something that has to be looked at. And we in COPA-COGECA are still of the opinion that CBAM has to be suspended and not been implemented and not expect farmers to pay for it until such a time as that the alternatives that are affordable are put in place. CBAM was never designed, I think, it was designed to prevent carbon leakage, not to weaken European agricultural food production.
And we want to see that, we don't want to see European farmers being at a competitive disadvantage because of the implementation of CBAM. As I said earlier, we fully support increasing nutrient circularity and improving the use of organic fertilizers. A stronger bioeconomy can contribute to the reduced dependency on imported inputs and improving nutrient efficiency. But to be clear, it does require a realistic timeframe and a science-based approach that is going to take time. And I think that the, absolutely the Commission need to move forward.
We were too long looking after the RENURE issue. We need to move forward and see how we can work organic nutrients into our fertilizer industry in a much greater way. But look, I look forward to taking questions from the committee and thanks very much, Chairman, for giving me the time.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gorman. And the last in this panel is Erik Meers from Ghent University. But I, oh, you are here. Sorry.
Thank you. Well, please, the floor is yours. You have five minutes, please.
Seven.
Seven.
Erik Meers
Seven minutes is not a lot of time to add nuance, and you might from the presentation I give and the drive towards replacing mineral fertilizers in general terms, but that's not, let's say, a drive towards replacing the fertilizer industry. In fact, I consider the existing European industry as a natural ally in the transition, and they have set about already their drive towards circularity. So that little disclaimer in front, if you see too much replacement, then do think that in mind. I will not linger again also on this first slide for those interested. I have a little bit of an industrial background before going to Ghent University, and I have been involved in a number of focus groups and committees and panels of the Commission dealing with the nutrients, but again, that's just added for those that want to look at the slide deck afterwards.
Phosphorus, I've only added one slide on phosphorus, again because of time constraints. There are a lot of things you can say about phosphorus and trying to replace our dependencies on import, and you can see from the left-hand figure, indeed, it has been mentioned today already that we are highly dependent, putting us in a geopolitical vulnerable position in frame of phosphorus imports. That means that trying to mitigate that dependency by means of local recycling, and there are some drives there via the sewage sludge, via municipal waste, via ashes that can be recovered, but I will not linger there today.
I will focus on nitrogen mostly in the next few slides. What I would do want to add, however, on this slide is on the right-hand side, and that's something that is insufficiently highlighted in in studies and debates, is that it's not only about what can we get at this stage via import on phosphorus, but also the price, and that was nicely presented in the first panel, is a matter of supply and demand. And we are also expecting that our output on phosphate rock reserves will somewhere level off in the next decades. That means that prices will increase significantly thereafter, and that also means that other countries that have current, let's say, monopolies on those reserves will start pulling them back more as well. So it's not only about current flows, it's also about where will that peak arise in future decades to come.
But I mentioned time constraints, so focusing on nitrogen mostly. Now, this figure is also given a little bit already by the previous panel.
You have this 50-50 more or less on animal manure and mineral fertilizer in terms of nitrogen going to cropland in Europe. The smaller pie chart numbers I'm less comfortable with because they are based on models, assumptions, and incomplete statistics. So Eurostat has no categories, for example, on nitrogen or nutrients coming from other sources like current bio-based fertilizers, which is one hiatus that we might already want to address in the statistics. But if we look at the natural gas consumption on mineral fertilizer, that is a big impact. If you look globally on natural gas consumption for the Haber-Bosch process, that is somewhat lower, below the 5% overall estimation.
If you look at Europe, well, we do use quite a lot of our natural gas requirements for nitrogen. And that also implies that although we are at 70% or decreasing a little bit on domestic production, we are dependent, of course, on natural gas imports to do so as well. There is a small paradox that I would like to pitch forward as well, and that is that people tend to think that mineral fertilizers are used to amend in regions where we do not have enough of other sources of nitrogen.
But that is not the case. We do have a manure surplus, for example, throughout most of Europe. And even in the regions in darker purple here that have high manure surplus per hectare on the soil balance, they are amongst highest also users in mineral fertilizer. So there is kind of a paradox that where you have also manure surplus production, you also have high mineral fertilizer usage. So this is a little bit how this came to be.
And again, this is not bashing the mineral fertilizer industry, but this is the principle of topping up based of course on a number of reasons that were at the basis of the Nitrates Directive. But we top off the level of animal manure at 170 kilograms per hectare per year in nitrate vulnerable zones. Crop requirements are usually higher depending on texture and crop used than that 170. Hence you need to top up and hence you have this dependency and need for mineral fertilizers on top of that. So that means also in high intensive animal production regions you do have high mineral fertilizer use still needed.
Now European projects have been looking into how we can reconcile all these nutrient balances and nutrient budgets and how we can improve circularity, how we can move gradually towards decarbonization of the fertilizer industry as well as integrating a growing importance for bio-based fertilizers. Again not going into all of these projects, but one thing that is an umbrella above all of them is that all these projects have also joined a voluntary collaboration scheme, the European Sustainable Nutrient Initiative, which has set up also four different working groups on technology, agronomy, sustainability and the market itself. So that is also something you might want to look at. One of these things that many of these projects are focusing on is that in order to again reconnect the animal production with the crop production, that which both are heavily dependent on nutrient inputs, whether it's resource input through natural gas for production of mineral fertilizers, import of phosphate and potash rock, or you need also a lot of proteins to feed our animals, all of which are then nutrient imports. Well, in order to reconcile those, processing is an upcoming activity which allows to rechannel, refunnel and reuse the minerals in those side streams.
RENURE has been mentioned, and I think it has been about more than 13 years in the making. I was also a panelist in this committee, the SAFEMANURE JRC study, and I think it is indeed one of the ways, but I do need to look at my time. It is one of those ways that you can say, okay, the topping up with mineral fertilizer does make sense also for nutrient use efficiency purposes, but on sustainability, having RENURE surpluses or manure surpluses processed into mineral fertilizer themselves locally can also integrate that circularity. Biogas is one key enabling technology that I would like to highlight as well, because that is one of the statistics that is insufficiently in Eurostat at the moment. But if we look at the surveys from, for example, the European Biogas Association and looking at the feedstocks that do contain a lot of nutrients themselves, whether they are from sewage, whether they are from municipal waste, food industry waste, and so on, all of these contain nutrients, and biogas is a key enabler that allows us to rechannel those nutrients.
What we do see also from the survey is that if we look at the balances there, and we are talking about 250 million tons of digestate on an annual basis, we do see that there is probably an underestimation of their current contribution already to the fertilizer overall.
And of course, stating the obvious, biogas produces biomethane, which is a perfect substitute for natural gas directly. And I need to wind up, I'm afraid. Yeah. And yeah, there are seven points I want to highlight. Value chains need to be integrated, and that's linking again to the existing fertilizer industry.
Precision fertilization, time did not allow me to go into that, but I think it will be key to reduce the losses and also reduce overall fertilizer use. Use less, recycle more will then become the new canon. Recognize recycled nutrients, I think we need some more statistical basis in Eurostat to also have a better grasp on that. Regulatory certainty was also mentioned. We need to have that.
Yeah, and I think I need to stop there. I'll leave the slide for those who want to read it.
Veronika Vrecionová
I am sorry because, you know, we have to leave time also for questions from our members. No, no, no, I do agree. Sorry I interrupt you. Sorry. So let's start with again with coordinators.
You have two minutes each. Herr Dorfmann is first.
Herbert Dorfmann
Ja, herzlichen Dank. Ich glaube, vor allem im letzten Vortrag, wofür ich herzlich danke, da waren eine ganze Reihe von Inputs, aber ich habe auch den Eindruck bekommen, bei dem Thema nicht recht weiter.
Wir sprechen auch hier im Haus seit Jahren, fast Jahrzehnten über RENURE. Und meine Frage wäre einfach, wo sind die größten Einschränkungen heute? Wieso gelingt es uns nicht, diese Technologie auf den Weg zu bringen? Sind sie vor allem regulatorische Probleme oder finanzielle, also Wettbewerbsprobleme? Oder wo liegt eigentlich der Grund, wieso wir dieses Problem nicht besser angehen?
Und liegt nicht ein... also ich glaube, es ist ja schon ein Schritt nach vorne, wenn ich mir auch die Livestock Strategy von letzter Woche der Kommission anschaue, dass wir endlich verstehen, dass das Tier und die Tierhaltung Teil einer Kreislaufwirtschaft in der Landwirtschaft und vor allem einer Kreislaufdüngewirtschaft sein kann und sein muss. Aber das setzt voraus, dass es eine vernünftige Verteilung von Tieren in der Europäischen Union gibt.
Und ist nicht ein Teil des Problems, was wir haben, auch diese sehr unausgeglichene Verteilung von Tieren in der Europäischen Union? Das heißt, dass wir Regionen haben, wo wir eine sehr hohe Dichte an Tieren haben und andere Regionen, wo die Tierhaltung zunehmend uninteressant wird. Und damit halt dieses Gleichgewicht und dieser Beitrag des Tieres für die Kreislaufwirtschaft, Düngerwirtschaft auch zunehmend zu einem Problem wird oder nicht mehr da ist. Herzlichen Dank.
Eric Sargiacomo
Merci Madame la Présidente. Je voudrais remercier évidemment les trois intervenants pour leurs interventions, peut-être plus particulièrement Monsieur Schulman qui vient d'avoir une nouvelle promotion avec des nouvelles fonctions au sein de l'EFSA. Et il se trouve qu'il est aussi un grand spécialiste du système finlandais. Il a commencé à parler du stockage et j'ai eu l'occasion de me rendre en Finlande et d'observer par moi-même le système de stockage qu'ont mis en place les Finlandais et le côté souple, la gestion agile de ces stocks qui ne ressemblent absolument pas à ce qu'on a pu imaginer dans les années 80 ou 90 à l'échelle européenne. Je trouve extrêmement intéressant d'ailleurs cette gestion souple qui allie le public, le privé, qui est à la fois national mais aussi complètement déconcentré sur le territoire et qui tient compte évidemment de la situation particulière de la Finlande.
On l'a vu sur l'image avec le climat, mais aussi avec un voisin un peu particulier qu'est la Russie avec 1400 kilomètres de frontière.
Les engrais figurent au rayon des intrants stratégiques de cette stratégie finlandaise au même titre que les semences, les additifs pour l'alimentation animale. Et je crois qu'il ne faut pas oublier cette donnée sur les intrants dans la façon dont on perçoit notre stratégie en matière de stockage stratégique pour les années futures. C'est dans ce sens-là que j'ai mis un certain nombre de propositions dans le règlement OCM et je souhaiterais ainsi demander aux trois intervenants ce qu'ils pensent de l'inclusion des engrais et des autres intrants stratégiques dans les plans de sécurité et d'approvisionnement que les États membres auront à faire suite à la révision du règlement OCM.
Thank you. Raffaele Stancanelli is not there. Somebody from Patriots want to take the floor? No. Okay, in this case, Madame Deloge, please.
Valérie Deloge
Écoutez, je vais en profiter pour essayer de vous poser quelques questions en même temps. Je vous remercie déjà pour ces interventions et puis les questions que je vais vous poser, je ne sais pas exactement si c'est à vous ou à la DG AGRI qui pourront me répondre.
Mais en attendant, je voulais savoir si face aux freins actuels à la méthanisation, la directive nitrates ne pourrait-elle pas être assouplie afin de permettre aux petits agriculteurs de valoriser plus largement le digestat comme engrais à part entière ? Et puis les fertilisants biosourcés représentent une réelle opportunité pour réduire la dépendance européenne aux importations. Et quelle action simple et sans coût administratif supplémentaire et sans coût tout court pour nos agriculteurs, qu'est-ce qu'on pourrait proposer justement à ce niveau-là ? Et puis on parlait du stockage à l'instant, mais donc le stockage stratégique d'engrais est annoncé par l'Union européenne. Et comment compte-t-on justement garantir une sécurité d'approvisionnement sans risquer un report de dépendance vers d'autres fournisseurs étrangers ?
Voilà, je vous remercie.
Bert-Jan Ruissen
Dank u wel, voorzitter, en dank u wel aan de sprekers voor hun goede inbreng. Ik ben het helemaal met u eens als u zegt: we moeten alles op alles zetten om meststoffen betaalbaar te houden. Want ik realiseer me heel goed dat voor onze voedselproductie meststoffen cruciaal zijn. Zonder meststoffen geen voedselproductie, zo eenvoudig is het denk ik gewoon. Tegelijkertijd moeten we ook wel kijken hoe we circulariteit kunnen bevorderen.
En dan denk ik toch ook aan mogelijkheden om dierlijke mest beter te benutten. En dan heb ik het niet alleen over RENURE, ik heb het dan ook gewoon puur over de inzet van onbewerkte dierlijke mest. De heer Meers ging onder andere in op de norm die we kennen vanuit de nitraatrichtlijn, de norm van 170 kilogram stikstof per hectare die geldt voor dierlijke mest. En tegelijkertijd moeten we daarbij vaststellen dat het best een knellende norm is, die 170 kilogram stikstof per hectare. En dat leidt ertoe in sommige situaties dat sommige boeren zich noodzaakt zien om dierlijke mest af te voeren van het bedrijf tegen hele hoge kosten.
Maar omdat de gewassen eigenlijk meer aankunnen of de behoefte van gewassen hoger is, moet diezelfde boer vervolgens hartstikke dure kunstmest aankopen om aan de meststoffenbehoefte te voorzien. Dat is natuurlijk een hele rare, merkwaardige situatie. Dus daarom de vraag die ik zou willen stellen aan de sprekers: hoe kijkt u aan tegen de nitraatrichtlijn? Bent u het met ons eens, en met ons bedoel ik het Parlement, want er ligt al een uitspraak van het Parlement. Als Parlement hebben we gezegd: er moet een herziening komen van de nitraatrichtlijn.
Bent u het daarmee eens? En bent u het dan ook vooral met me eens dat we vooral ook naar die norm van 170 kilogram stikstof per hectare moeten kijken? En is er geen behoefte aan om meer naar maatwerk toe te gaan?
We moeten ons goed realiseren: er is geen grondsoort hetzelfde. De uitspoelingsgevoeligheid van gronden verschilt ook heel sterk. Het is ook heel merkwaardig eigenlijk om met een uniforme norm te werken die voor heel Europa zou moeten gelden. Moet daar niet meer maatwerk komen en is daar dus geen behoefte aan herziening van de nitraatrichtlijn? Dank u.
Elsi Katainen
Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for your excellent presentations, which remind us how farmers' resilience can also be strengthened by improving the functioning of the fertilizer market and reducing price risks. Currently, fertilizer pricing is non-transparent in many places, which weakens competition, makes it difficult for farmers to make decisions as well. We can all admit that we need more concrete measures to work with this issue.
The EU should be more transparent and comparable about the fertilizer fertilizer prices in the member member state level, not only EU level, but also the member state level. And this would increase competition in the internal market, make the market more efficient and help farmers to produce their their inputs at more competitive prices. At the same time, the EU should develop the future market for fertilizers, and this would maybe strengthen the competitiveness of agriculture and reduce dependence of market disruptions caused by imported fertilizers. And I would like to hear concrete examples on how can we support farmers from from price fluctuations and uncertain markets, and what do you think are the most vital things EU should do to improve the fertilizer markets and price transparency between member states. Thank you.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay, thank you very much. Greens, Thomas Waitz, please, two minutes.
Thomas Waitz
Thank you, Chair, and I I want to thank the speakers. First, Mr. Schulman, just a small comment. I hope that members meanwhile understand that agriculture in Finland looks different than in Portugal. I I think we can take this for granted.
And but I want to thank you because you also highlighted that farmers find alternatives. Well, it comes for a certain price when it comes to productivity or whatever, but I want to thank you that you were actually highlighting this because this is what I see in practice: farmers adapt to the situation. Mr. Gorman, I read my notes, you're from Ireland. You're importing 80% of your fruit and vegetables and grains from elsewhere, they're produced elsewhere, and your livestock density is to such a great grade that if my calculations are right, you don't even need a single grain of imported fertilizer to fulfill your needs on the island. So I don't understand your strong speech in favor of prices of artificial fertilizer.
I really don't know where you're coming from. And your attack on CBAM, I mean, do you understand that you you would destroy European industry? You would destroy competitiveness of European industry. I mean, I was pretty harsh to the colleague earlier, but you know, I'm much more standing on the side of European industry rather than having import dependencies. Do you want to increase our import dependencies by attacking CBAM?
I mean, please think about what the effects of your claims and your demands are.
I'm a bit astonished, I must say. And to Mr. Mayers, I thank you very much for your more differentiated showing of the nuances. And my concrete question is, to what degree and in what time could we actually decrease our need for artificial fertilizer? And do you think European industry would be able to fulfill the still existing demand with EU decarbonized or renewable-based fertilizer? What do you think?
Is this possible by numbers and in what timespan? What time would we need to actually change the value chains there? Thank you very much.
Luke Ming Flanagan
Thank you very much. We have known for a long time now, anyone who wants to know or anyone who follows the science, that we will have to move to a different system where we don't depend on fossil fuels. And while I'll say it again, Mr. Trump is a lunatic, sometimes lunatics wake you up to the reality of what's coming, because this is what it will look like in the future. We won't need a lunatic like Donald Trump to cut off our oil supply, we will run out of it.
So we've known this for a long time and we should have planned for it. When I got elected as a county councillor 24 years ago, within six months of getting elected, I made my way to Camphill community, a place down in Kilkenny on the Tipperary border, to have a look at an anaerobic digestion facility. I have to say I was excited leaving it. I was excited about the fact that instead of having what would have been up until then considered a waste material potentially causing problems, it got turned into a digestate which was taken away again by the farmers who could use it as fertilizer and the community there could use the energy. Well, whatever they could use, they had to burn the rest off into the atmosphere because they weren't allowed to sell it anywhere else.
And over the years I've watched this situation and I've hoped, particularly in Ireland as the previous speaker has said, we produce a lot of shit in Ireland and we could make good use of it. So the question of is why don't we? I hear the president of the Irish Farmers Association talk about feeding the world and that is an honorable objective. But as someone who comes from a country that suffered from starvation while food was exported in the 1840s and 50s, I think we should learn from that. And I'd like Ireland to be able to feed itself first.
We can't produce enough, enough of about 80% of the different types of food we eat. And if we had a crisis in the morning, we're not going to be able to live on milk crumb and on meat. We will need other things. So we need, instead of ignoring what's coming down the line like we did for the next last 30 years, we need to plan. We need to look at planting legumes, and we need to look at making use of the resources that we have.
Because the reality is, when Trump goes away, eventually so will the oil, and we need another plan anyway. And to me, I think instead of talking about feeding the world before you can feed yourself, I'd say cop on.
Ivan David
Měl-li to, že nemám příležitost se tady zeptat zástupce DG AGRI na to, jakým způsobem má být tento problém kompenzován, to jest tím pokusem realokovat přímé platby, protože nevíme, co by to v důsledcích znamenalo.
Ale je jisté, že velkým problémem by bylo to, že ten deficit by měl být kompenzován národními státy, protože to by samozřejmě vedlo k další nerovnosti v podmínkách. Jinak samozřejmě jsem přesvědčen o tom, i když to vypadá jako příliš vzdálený problém, že bychom se měli snažit napravit mezinárodní vztahy, které vedly k těm problémům, které nyní řešíme, a že bychom měli upustit od projektů, které nás výrazně poškozují, to je ta snaha o dekarbonizaci bez toho, aniž by bylo skutečně prokázáno, že nějak prospívá životnímu prostředí a oddaluje ty klimatické změny, které pozorujeme.
Takže pokud tedy ten CBAM je snahou kompenzovat důsledky projektů, které pramení z Evropské unie, tak bychom tak asi na něm musíme trvat, ale měli bychom se zamyslet nad tím, kde jsou ty příčiny. A v tomto případě samozřejmě musí být naše snaha jít po těch problémech od jejich počátku, od jejich vzniku a neřešit stále další a další následné důsledky.
Thank you very much and let's start with K-G-I, first vice-chair Buda, please.
Daniel Buda
În primul rând, aș vrea să spun că noi nu am cerut la un moment dat ca taxa CBAM să fie suspendată. Ni s-a comunicat însă că acest lucru ar dăuna foarte mult agriculturii sau industriei interne de la nivelul Uniunii Europene, însă am cerut ca acești bani care rezultă din această taxă să fie trimiși către fermieri. Și v-aș ruga să urmăriți această chestiune, ca acești bani să ajungă la fermieri, ca să fie foarte clar. Pentru că ei sunt în primul rând victime la ceea ce înseamnă această penurie a îngrășămintelor și a creșterii prețurilor la îngrășăminte. Mai departe, domnule Merz, am fost împreună cu colegii din Comisia AGRI la invitația domnului Carlo Fidanza în Italia, unde am putut să vedem capacități de management a gunoiului de grajd la o fermă de 1200 de capete, unde se producea biogaz, se producea îngrășăminte.
Practic, asistam la ceea ce înseamnă un management foarte eficient a gunoiului de grajd.
Se pune întrebarea firească, domnilor experți, de ce nu putem multiplica astfel de mecanisme de management al gunoiului de grajd la nivelul tuturor fermelor în Uniunea Europeană, în așa fel încât pe de o parte să avem acest management eficient și să reducem nitrații și nitriții din sol și așa mai departe, să avem îngrășăminte și în același timp să avem evident și energie electrică. Este o întrebare care trebuie să vedem unde avem un răspuns eficient la această întrebare.
Thank you, Madame Grapini.
Maria Grapini
Da. E foarte bine că ne-am întâlnit. Iată, am ascultat industria, ascultăm acum COPA-COGECA, reprezentanții fermierilor. Noi suntem Comisia de AGRI din Parlament și avem și Comisia Europeană. Stimați colegi, eu sunt inginer de profesie și am lucrat în industrie.
Pentru mine este foarte clar. Putem să avem bioeconomie, bioenergie, biofertilizanți, dar trebuie să le facem în ritmul în care avem buget, putem să schimbăm tehnologia. Continui.
Deci, din punctul meu de vedere, timpii și armonizarea în acest lanț pe care l-a prezentat foarte bine domnul Merz nu sunt sincronizați și apare ca un ceas la care rotițele se blochează și pierde toată lumea. Pierde și industria, pierde și securitatea alimentară, pierd fermierii, pierd consumatorii, pentru că în acest în acest lanț intră și consumatorii. De aceea, părerea mea este că trebuie Comisia Europeană și noi am propus de mai multe ori Comisiei AGRI, trebuie să să facem această strategie și industrială și pentru securitatea alimentară, PAC-ul, trebuie să armonizăm bugetele cu tehnologia. Nu avem suficientă tehnologie pentru reciclare, de exemplu, în foarte multe domenii. Mulțumesc.
Okay, thank you, Mr. Häusling.
Martin Häusling
Also ich habe mich nur gewundert, da vorne sitzt ein Vertreter von COPA-COGECA und redet die ganze Zeit schlimmer als die Industrie von CIBEP abschaffen. Nicht ein Mal nehmen Sie in den Wort das Wort Leguminosen. Haben Sie schon mal was davon gehört? So wie es die ökologische Landwirtschaft macht, kann das viel dazu beitragen, die Äcker mit Stickstoff zu düngen. Keiner hat das hier gesagt, keiner der Vertreter der Landwirte.
Ich habe nur ein Mal das Wort Kreislaufwirtschaft gehört, ein einziges Mal.
Aber wir können doch nicht auf Dauer, sagen wir mit fossiler Energie, mit Importen von endlichen Ressourcen Landwirtschaft betreiben. Und ich finde, wenn hier behauptet wird, man könne gar nicht Landwirtschaft betreiben ohne diese fossilen Energien und ohne diese Düngemittel, Herr Kollege, dann schauen Sie doch mal bei den ökologischen Landwirten vorbei, wie die das schaffen, irgendwas zu erzeugen ohne diese Importe. Und ich sag's noch mal, wir haben pro jeden Hektar 50 Kilogramm Stickstoffüberschuss, 50 Kilogramm. Wir haben kein Problem, dass wir unterversorgt sind, wir sind überversorgt. Und dass die Tierzahlen in den Regionen in Küstennähe am höchsten sind, hat das vielleicht was mit den Importen von billigen Futtermitteln, zum Beispiel Soja zu tun?
Dazu sollte man auch mal die Frage stellen. Also ich finde, wir haben eine Menge Sachen angesprochen, aber wie man Lösungen hinbekommt, schauen Sie in den ökologischen Landbau, da gibt es Lösungen und das wird hier nicht ein einziges Mal erwähnt.
Asger Christensen.
Asger Christensen
Tak formand. CBAM det bliver en meget stor omkostning for landmænd, og vi er simpelthen nødt til at finde en ny vej på, hvordan vi håndterer den problem om decarbonisation. Jeg tror på, at biogas det kan være en af løsningerne, som du nævner. Det er vi simpelthen nødt til at skal udvikle. Vi skal have en ny teknologi ind på biogassen, sådan at vi får designet gødning ud af det.
Og så har jeg et stort, stort problem med, at når det rigtig blæser, så står ni ud af ti vindmøller stille, fordi det er negativ pris på energi. Hvorfor kan vi ikke udnytte det til gødning? Og så blev det nævnt, men jeg tror meget, meget på, at ny teknologi, CRISPR-teknologien, kan være med til at udvikle planter, som selv kan samle kvælstof op, sådan at vi ikke skal købe så meget gødning fra industrien. Tak.
Thank you, Mr. Mullally.
Ciaran Mullooly
Thank you, Chair. I mean, let's be straight and let's be fair about the CBAM situation. At this stage, more than ten member states with very different stocking rates and very different farming enterprises have called for it to be scrapped or suspended. So it's not just one country it's an issue in. Over the past number of years, every major crisis has exposed one uncomfortable truth in this building.
When the costs rise, it is the farmer who's left carrying the burden. Whether it was COVID-19 or the war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices, fertilizer costs, who's protesting outside? Who's hit? Farmers have paid more for their inputs, but have little ability to recover these costs through the supply chain. So it's not a resilient food chain in the first instance.
It's a weak one. So I mean, I ask the panel, would you support the creation of an EU fertilizer refund or rebate mechanism to return exceptional input cost increases to farmers due to CBAM if it's not suspended? And secondly, do you agree the recent political and market crises have steadily weakened the farmer's position in the food supply chain? And if so, what concrete measures do you believe are needed to restore our farmer's bargaining power and ensure that extraordinary increases in production costs can be fairly recovered? Thank you.
Thank you. And now Madame Boras Pabón.
Mireia Borrás Pabón
Sí, gracias, presidenta. Bueno, a mí me gustaría dejar de escuchar aquí estrategias y empezar a escuchar respuestas, soluciones de verdad. Voy a explicar en un minuto muy brevemente lo que le está pasando a un agricultor europeo. Primero, necesita fertilizantes, sí o sí. En esto estamos todos de acuerdo, no es opcional.
Sin abono no hay cosecha. Segundo, esos fertilizantes se fabrican con gas y con energía. Y en Europa, quien los fabrica paga el CO2 diez veces más caro que en China, unos ochenta euros por tonelada frente a siete euros de China. Tercero, los fertilizantes que vienen de fuera les hemos puesto aranceles.
Y desde ahora, además, también el famoso CBAM, un ajuste de carbono en frontera que encarece todavía más el precio de los fertilizantes. Resultado: producir aquí es muchísimo más caro por el impuesto encubierto al CO2 y traerlo de fuera también es más caro por el sistema del CBAM. Es decir, que en Europa aquí todos se embolsan el dinero que se recolecta de estos impuestos y de esos aranceles y el agricultor europeo paga la factura. Y la factura ¿cuál es? Pues ya lo sabemos todos: fertilizantes nitrogenados un 72 % más caros que en 2024.
Tremendo éxito, señorías. Al final, además, ocurre siempre lo mismo: la producción se va fuera, el empleo se va fuera y las emisiones, señorías, también se van fuera, aunque no estén en sus estadísticas europeas. Así que tengo dos preguntas. ¿Por qué Europa hace todo lo posible para que producir aquí sea cada vez más difícil, más caro y se vuelva prácticamente una misión imposible? Y segunda pregunta: ¿pueden sustituir realmente los digestatos y todos aquellos elementos orientados a una economía circular que son, por supuesto, bienvenidos, pero pueden sustituir realmente en volumen y en plazo a la producción industrial que estamos asfixiando con impuestos?
Ya está, muchas gracias.
Veronika Vrecionová
I'm sorry, I have to interrupt you. If you want to hear answers, you know, we need some time.
Okay, so let's go back to our panelists. And Mr. Gorman asked me that he have to leave early, so please, you have three minutes now for your replies, not more, I'm sorry.
Francie GORMAN
Yes, directed my way. So, look, apologies I have to try and catch a flight back to Dublin. So, I do, I don't, I do think the Nitrates Directive needs to be one of the first questions needs to be revisited, along with the Habitats Directive and a number of others. They've been, they've been implemented in a way now that was never, never intended when they, when they, especially the likes of the Habitats Directive that's there 40 years. Anything that's there that length of time should be revisited anyway and reviewed and see is it fit for purpose.
I think we do need greater transparency on, on the prices of European fertilizer. There's a huge issue there. We, we don't seem to be getting the reduction in fertilizer prices that farmers in the rest of the world are getting with the drops that we've experienced around the world in the last number of weeks. I think on CBAM, look, let's just be honest about CBAM. Farmers are going to pay the cost of CBAM at the end of the day, full stop.
It's going to add 12 billion euro to our costs over the next seven years. And if we're serious here about trying to have an industry and trying to help farmers, it's one input, it's a crucial input that we need.
We need to see how we can take that cost out of the business. We need to have a fertilizer strategy that adopts both the bio and chemical fertilizers over the next number of years, but we're not going to be able to do that in the morning. And to put the cost on farmers, it's, I'm astonished that you're astonished I think we should accept CBAM. No farmer wants to pay the price we're paying for fertilizer at the moment. And the reason we have our tillage farmers across Europe nearly broke is because they can't afford to pay for the inputs that they need to produce the crops.
So if we're serious about having farmers in the European Union, we need at this stage to try and see how we can take costs out of the system because we're going through a negotiation process for the new CAP where none of the countries are prepared to put more money into the pot to support farmers. So you can't have it both ways. If we want farmers, you've got to support them either in reducing costs or putting your hand into your pocket and giving them more money. Now, the reason, the reason, the reason, the reason...
Francie GORMAN
So just to be clear, we're basically a livestock-dominated country. 95% of our country is in grass. Our tillage farmers are going broke.
They're going broke one after another. We now only have 7,000 farmers, tillage farmers in the country, and the most commercial of them are finding it hard to make a living because of the costs of production, because they have to compete with grain coming in from parts of the world that is not produced to the same standards that we produce it here. And that's an issue. And the reason we don't produce fruit and veg is because the retail sector have broken our fruit and veg farmers. We now have 150 fruit and veg farmers in Ireland.
So we can't produce that back home, we produce it, we import it where it can be imported more or produced cheaper and it comes in, but it has broken our fruit and veg farmers. And that's a pattern across Europe. We have lost millions of farmers across Europe over the last two decades. And unless... and this idea that we're going to have a utopia where we'll be able to produce crops in the morning and make a margin without fertilizer, that's not going to happen in the short term. So what we want is a plan looking five, 10 years down the road where we can incorporate bio-fertilizer with the chemical fertilizer we use, but give us a chance in the meantime to stay making a living.
Imposing costs and regulation like CBAM on top of us is only going to break us, not support us. On digestate, the reason... or the reason RENURE's been adopted has been approved, but it hasn't been adopted and implemented at member state level, primarily I'd say because of the cost of it.
So that's something that needs to be supported as well. That interaction between bio and chemical fertilizer is going to be the future for our industry if, if it can be done, but again, it's a longer, longer-term prospect. And going back to CBAM, I just can't see why we're talking about taking regulation and cost out of our industry, why would you impose a tax on farmers and then give it back to them? You suspend it until such a time as it can be imposed in a fair way. And on digestate, the last question, digestate can, uh, digestate can replace chemical fertilizer.
Back home in Ireland our problem is we don't have a biomethane industry. And it's going to take years to develop it, and anyone that tries to develop one in the morning could be years trying to get planning permission in place to be able to develop it because anybody that, that even thinks about it can put in an objection to it on any sort of spurious grounds and the thing is held up.
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you very much. Now Mr. Schulman, you have three minutes. Let's try, but you know, we have some more time from interpreters, but please try to be brief.
Max SCHULMAN
I'll try to be brief here. I mean, lots of very good questions and I can see that you as a committee, you are really on top of this situation and top of this topic as well. Lots of questions.
I mean yes very good to bring in some alternative crops like legumes. It fits very well. They are already done. Problem is they have a very long rotation when it comes into these and still today there has been a little bit difficult to be able to implement enough of the legumes into the farming sector inside European Union. That's why we now have a protein plan on the way as well.
So these are connected in there. And they are also connected with the animal sector as well. Yes we are using alternatives but that needs usually investments at least when it comes into the arable sector. You need to maintain and make sure that you have a contractor that can spread it out or then you need to invest in the equipment yourself. So this also means that you need a profitability to be able to do this investment.
When you come into stockpiling I would say that that would be something that I would also suggest that the Union should look at. Member State level but also at the Union level to see can we as with that maintain and make sure that price shocks would not be as great as we have seen them during this crisis. Not so that you would have an oversupply on the market for longer periods. No. They should be made so that they would make sure that it's a short-term shock absorber when it comes into the market as well.
So I would suggest that we as European Union would look into that.
Price discovery, very important. I mean, we have and we started here by saying we talked about the single market. Yes, we have a single market, but it's not common. We do not have a clue what happens inside the European single market when it comes to fertilizers. No price information, no transparency whatsoever.
That's the first thing that we need to make sure that from the member state level we get the prices, let's say for the three most sold fertilizers. Let's see then what we will learn from that. And then we need to build up a good risk management system, price risk management system. We have that on our produce, on cereals, oilseeds, why not on fertilizers? So I think this is a thing as well that should be looked at from the Commission's side, but also from the legislators, but involving the whole chain as well.
Prices could be, I mean, from the member state level could easily be then put on on the fertilizer market observatory page, where we you would be able to see how it is going on in the rest of the countries. And I'm quite sure that we would see that there would be a more even pricing slowly coming into the European Union through that. So this is a big thing that should be done.
We are really lacking this kind of a price discovery of today. Digestates, RENURE, and all of these, absolutely something that they are used, but some of them have high costs of transport. So you cannot transport them cost-efficiently far enough. This means that we need to have more digesters built in the regions where they would be needed, but they could produce gas to the industry from where you could make fertilizer in the plants that we still have running today. Let's keep them.
And then also on the side, they would make the digestate that can be used on the fields. And at that stage, we should also work more on the nitrate usage efficiency. You could look into the European Nitrates Panel, how they have looked at how the nutrient, I mean, N usage efficiency should be put in place, and that could be used as a basis for the renewing of the Nitrates Directive as well. Thank you.
Veronika Vrecionová
Okay, thank you, sir. And the last who will now time for replies is Erik Meers. So please, you have just now six minutes.
Erik Meers
So yeah, I have written down a lot of questions and I can only indeed also say that this body is quite technologically smart in the topics that have been handled. So it's, you really grasped the nature of the problems, I think. On the question of the nitrates directive, I think indeed it is long overdue, over more than 30 years, and the situation has completely changed since then. It was a part of environmental legislation, which is of course it still is, but the state of technology has evolved dramatically. And also, not only from the agronomic perspective, not only from fertilizer production, but also from things like precision farming, also how we understand the models and the flows of nutrients throughout the ecosystem and throughout the agricultural system.
Okay, thank you.
The possible inclusion of monitoring systems, the inclusion of precision principles, all of which are not in the nitrates directive. And the nitrates directive allows for exceptions through derogations, but again that has led to a patchwork of different legislations differently adopted in different countries. And again, it lacks that commonality of a one overarching piece of legislation. So I would say indeed the nitrates directive is long overdue for a revision.
On the number of the 170, which was also tackled, the 170 was not scientifically based at the time it was launched. So it might indeed be subject also to investigation or evaluation. But of course, the Nitrates Directive needs to uphold the environmental quality. So I would also advocate then for all these other things I mentioned on the improved state of how to apply fertilizers has evolved as well. And yeah, I'm not going to reiterate the other points.
On biogas, very important. Yes, biogas is one of the key enabling technologies that will drive us forward. It has been doing so so far. I mentioned there is already 250 million tons of digestate on the European market as of today. That is compared to, for example, 1.4 billion tons of manure.
So it is not insignificant anymore in many countries. And there are indeed some countries that are frontrunners and some countries that are yet to develop their market. But the potential is hugely there. And it is a technology that can leverage nutrient flows coming from wastes, from food industry, other types of wastes, some of which have not even been touched upon as potential. So there is a huge potential there.
What is also not mentioned yet today is that biogas is a key enabling technology also contributes to avoided emissions. For example, if you put manure into a digester, you will have avoided emissions at the manure storage itself. That is significant. There are studies out there that do the overall carbon footprinting of agriculture as a result of that. Of course, renewable energy production is self-evident.
The nutrients can be rechanneled through that, as also mentioned. But what is not mentioned is that if you pass through a digester, you will also increase your nutrient use efficiency of the nutrients that pass through the digester. That is because you mineralize your organics, meaning that the mineral components become more plant-available. That itself is also an environmental and agronomic gain. And also not mentioned, we mentioned nutrients, we did not mention carbon.
Biogas contributes to carbon sequestration and buildup and soil health improvement. So yes, a lot of questions towards biogas and I wholeheartedly can say there are a lot of benefits there to be reaped as well.
There were some questions linked to what are the limitations, how can we help farmers forward? Well, in the last two slides, I do invite you to look at my slide deck. I did seven recommendations. At my last slide, I also give my email address for those that want to debate afterwards, let's say, about some of these recommendations. In general, I can only subscribe to the point that, as mentioned today several times, regulatory, yes, is one of the constraints moving forward.
Also administration, the CAP reform was difficult to implement by farmers, so although it is meant to be a support for farmers, it has been an administrative burden the way it is implemented. But also licenses, operational licenses, license to operate, they are dramatically slow in many Member States. We did surveys comparing different types of technologies on bio-based fertilizers, biogas operations, manure processing and so on. And these range from three to ten years in order to get things implemented and then you need to start building things and doing things. So that puts us past 2030, by the way.
So indeed, there is some time to go.
But the main hurdle, and I do need to look at my time, I would say is administration and regulatory aspects because the state of play in farming, the state of play in fertilizer industry and how that has been progressing, and the state of proof as done by science and technology also at relevant scale, at operational scale, has been there. So there is a lot of proof already there on agronomic performance, environmental performance, carbon footprinting, modeling, you name it. All these projects, I put the logos there, you can also look them up. But I would say it's time also to put some regulations forward. And yeah, one of the things that I started with six minutes ago was the Nitrates Directive, I think would be indeed one of those candidates.
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you very much. So at first I would like really to thanks a lot to all commission. Okay, the commission. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't have it here.
Okay, I didn't see. Okay, sorry, sorry. Just now I also have to give the floor to Madame Ruiz again. So please, Madame, the floor is yours.
Isabel Ruiz
Thank you, Madam Chair. So we've heard a lot about different issues. I will try to address them. CBAM, I mean, the debate was heated. We all know CBAM and ETS are central elements of the EU's climate framework.
And the challenges created by high energy and fertilizer prices for the fertilizer and agricultural sector are a real concern.
And the Commission has already taken important measures in relation to CBAM. I mean, we kept the framework, but we adopted a 1% flat markup for the imports, default values embedded for the fertilizers, in order to lower the impact. At the same time, we have also proposed, and they are in force since the 30th of May, tariff-free quotas for imports of ammonia, urea, and certain nitrogen fertilizers originating from third countries other than Russia and Belarus. And these are measures that the Commission has implemented from the trade side to try to ease the pressure. Then in relation to RENURE, manure, the Nitrates Directive, I mean, Professor Meers is much more expert than I am.
We all know that integrating digestate into agricultural system can help close nutrient cycles, reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizer and minimizing waste.
However, this approach requires careful management to ensure an effective balance between the environmental benefits and the potential risks, such as ammonia emissions, nutrient leaching, and contamination from harmful substances originating from diverse feedstocks. This being said, I mean, application of manure is already allowed by the Nitrates Directive, by the current text, as long as certain environmental and safety conditions are respected. The directive provides ample room for the use of digestates under the limit, and digestates can also be used outside vulnerable areas where no restrictions apply. We are currently examining and strengthening scientific evidence for understanding the conditions under which the applications of digestates can be more broadly applied and developed. And our colleagues from JRC are currently undertaking a scientific assessment to underpin a possible proposal for review of the directive.
So this is on the nitrates.
Then I heard also calls for increased market transparency and I would like to recall that the fertilizer action plan has a specific section devoted to this. So we want indeed to to reinforce the fertilizer market observatory so that there are more more market monitoring is being strengthened and also more data is available in relation to prices while always complying with competition law concerns because we need to abide by the legal framework as well. And then in relation to stockpiling, this is also one of the topics that we have identified in the fertilizer action plan. So we will examine the relevance of stockpiling measures. And all these topics actually are going to be discussed in the framework of the upcoming fertilizer value chain partnership that we are intending to launch as from quarter three 2026, so as from after the summer, where the aim is really to get together all the all the actors which are part of this value chain to try to identify bottlenecks and commonly agree if possible on possible solutions because if these solutions are commonly agreed, then there would be higher intake from those that supply and also from those that need to buy.
So, linked also to alternative solutions, new technologies and the topics that we heard during the first session of this hearing. And then, just to conclude, a bit outside the fertilizer action plan as such, but because I have heard calls for how can we enhance the bargaining power of farmers, I would just like to recall that the co-legislators have recently adopted the targeted amendment to the CMO regulation, which has a specific provision to enhance the bargaining power of farmers in relation to the supply of their products. So this is not necessarily in relation to buying their inputs, but this is part of the overall picture for enhancing the resilience of the farming community. And also other initiatives are on the way to make sure that farmers can operate within the supply chain under conditions which are considered to be fair. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Veronika Vrecionová
Thank you, Madam, and we are in the end of our hearing today. So thank you very much, all our panelists.
You can see that this issue is very important and interesting for all our members. Thank you, Mr. Minchev, that you have joined us. Thanks really a lot to all interpreters for more time and their colleagues. See you tomorrow as agreed. You are just moving.
Okay, okay. So see you tomorrow at 9:00 again here in this room. Have a nice evening.
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