Taking Stock of the European Commission’s 2019-2024 Mandate in the Agri-food Sector: What Progress Towards Sustainability?

At the end of the European Commission 2019-2024 mandate, this post reflects on the legislative changes proposed by the European Commission to improve the sustainability of the agri-food sector. Overall, the new regulatory developments can be seen as a positive step towards sustainability in the sector, but much remains to be done as the definition of sustainability remains unclear and many areas do not appear to be on the path to sustainability, argues Clara Colonna.

The European Commission’s 2019-2024 mandate, marked with many reforms in the agri-food sector, is about to end. Following the election of the new European Parliament in June 2024, the Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen has been re-appointed for the coming five years, and the proposed list of new commissioners should become official by the end of the year.

In this context, this contribution provides an overview of agri-food law reforms that were adopted over the last five years to improve the sustainability of the sector – as sustainability has been a policy priority of the last Commission’s mandate.

The agri-food sustainability ambitions of the Commission’s mandate in 2019

In the very first weeks of its mandate in 2019, the Commission presented its ‘European Green Deal’ which aimed to “transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy”. This ambitious strategy was then further detailed in several sectors, including in the agri-food sector with the publication in 2020 of the ‘Farm to Fork’ and ‘Biodiversity’ strategies. These strategies envisaged ambitious quantitative targets to address environmental concerns, including reducing by 50% of the use of, and risk from, chemical pesticides, and the use of more hazardous pesticides by 2030, bringing back at least 10% of agricultural area under high-diversity landscape features (e.g. integrating hedges, flower strips, ponds, trees, etc.), turning at least 25% of the EU’s agricultural land into organic farming by 2030, and reducing use of fertilisers by at least 20%. To turn these targets into action, both legislative and non-binding measures were envisaged in these strategies. Not all envisaged measures were associated with concrete targets, but these measures covered many areas, ranging from animal protection to human nutrition.

However, at the end of Ursula von der Leyen’s first mandate, the picture is mixed in terms of sustainability. In a mandate period marked by the COVID-19 crisis, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, several periods of droughts, wildfires and floods, and massive demonstrations by farmers throughout Europe, the Commission managed to present most of the promised regulatory changes, but withdrew one of them, and left some important and long-awaited promises unfulfilled. During its mandate, the Commission also reduced environmental protection requirements set out in the Common Agricultural Policy. Eventually, the outcome of the legislative reforms is mixed, and what will the sustainability ambitions of the next Commission’s mandate be remains to be seen.

The legal operationalisation of the Commission’s sustainability ambitions in the agri-food sector

In its Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies of 2020, the Commission promised many regulatory changes on pesticide use, animal welfare, food waste, and biodiversity among others. Many of them saw the light of day, such as the ‘Deforestation-free Regulation’ in 2023, the ‘Nature Restoration Regulation’ in 2024, the ‘Geographical Indications Regulation’ in 2024, and the revision of the ‘Breakfast’ Directives in 2024. Some of these Regulations introduced relevant provisions to address environmental degradation caused by our current food system. For example, the Geographical Indications Regulation, which protects, among others, designations of origin and geographical indications, has integrated a provision on sustainability, according to which producer groups may agree to include ‘sustainability practices’ in the production of the product protected by a geographical indication. But, such practices remain voluntary for producers.

More ambitious requirements have been introduced by the Deforestation-free Regulation and the Nature Restoration Regulation. For example, the Deforestation-free Regulation prohibits the marketing in the EU of commodities (cocoa, cattle, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya, and wood) whose production cause deforestation, which are produced without respecting domestic legislation, and which are not covered by a due a diligence statement. Another example is the Nature Restoration Regulation, which requires Member States to set out measures, among others, to improve pollinator diversity and reverse the decline of pollinator populations, and to enhance biodiversity in agricultural and forest ecosystems.

However to date, many regulatory changes announced in the Farm to Fork strategy have not been adopted yet, and are still being negotiated by the co-legislators. These include the proposals on plants obtained by certain new genomic techniques, the protection of animals during transport, the production and marketing of plant reproductive material, food waste, soil health, the certification of carbon removals, and the legislative proposal on the substantiation and communication of environmental claims.

Despite these legislative changes and upcoming ones, not all ambitions of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies have materialised. For example, the Commission withdrew its legislative proposal on the long-awaited revision of pesticide regulation. In June 2022, the Commission proposed a Regulation which aimed to replace the existing ‘Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive’ (SUD) adopted in 2009, and align with the objectives of the European Green Deal and Farm to Fork strategy. One of the most significant proposed changes included reduction targets for the use of chemical plant protection products. However, in March 2024, the Commission withdrew its proposal because, according to the institution, “no agreement was foreseeable, in view of the rejection of the proposal by the European Parliament and the lack of progress of the discussions in the Council”.

The Commission also left some important promises of the Farm to Fork strategy behind. For example, the Commission did not propose its expected legislative framework on ‘sustainable food systems’, announced in the Farm to Fork strategy. According to this strategy, the Commission envisaged to propose such a legislation before the end of 2023, which would “promote policy coherence at EU and national level”, “mainstream sustainability in all food-related policies” and “strengthen the resilience of food systems”. It was expected to include “common definitions and general principles and requirements for sustainable food systems and foods” and to “address the responsibilities of all actors in the food system”. Given that this proposal has not been tabled by the European Commission at the time of writing this contribution, sustainability remains undefined and vaguely addressed in EU agri-food law. This is even more problematic as, according to the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission, the EU’s current food system is “not sustainable with respect to the environmental, economic and social aspects”.

The reduction of the environmental requirements in the Common Agricultural Policy

Next to the operationalisation of the ambitions of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity’s strategies into law, the Commission’s mandate was also marked by the adoption of the Common Agricultural Policy’s (CAP) reform. The EU’s CAP provides funding to farmers to pursue their activities and has been reformed many times since its creation in 1962. The last reform, proposed under the previous Commission’s mandate in 2018, has applied since January 2023. This reform has integrated many requirements to fund environmentally-friendly farming practices. However, amidst large farmers’ demonstrations in 2023 and 2024, the Commission proposed several amendments to the CAP rules which aimed to appease farmers’ concerns. These new amendments made the implementation of requirements more flexible, and set out several derogations to environmental requirements set out in the newly adopted CAP. For example, the new requirements set out in a Regulation adopted in May 2024 removed the obligation for farmers to dedicate a share of arable land  (i.e. land used to grow crops) to non-productive areas, which aimed to protect biodiversity and nature. The new requirements also gave Member States more flexibility to set out derogations to the CAP conditions to receive farmer-related funding. Noticeably, the reduction of environmental requirements has led the European Court of Auditors to question the ability of the new CAP rules to meet environmental goals set out in the European Green Deal.

In conclusion: A slow progress towards the sustainability of the agri-food sector

Eventually, progress towards sustainability of EU’s agri-food sector is mixed. On the one hand, if the co-legislators manage to adopt all the pending proposals (which are still being negotiated), the Commission would have proposed most of the legislative instruments announced in the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies. These developments can be seen as a positive step towards sustainability in the sector.

But, on the other hand, much remains to be done. The definition of sustainability remains unclear and many areas of the agri-food sector do not appear to be on the path to sustainability. In my view, two reasons may explain this situation. The first one is that many agri-food laws simply do not integrate sustainability objectives or requirements. This is mainly the case of agri-food laws which have not been revised under the current Commission’s mandate such as the ‘General Food Law’ Regulation adopted in 2002, which sets out food safety requirements; the ‘Novel Food’ Regulation adopted in 2015, which regulates novel foods on the EU market; and the ‘Food Information to Consumers Regulation’ adopted in 2011, which regulates food labelling. The second reason is that when agri-food laws do integrate sustainability objectives and requirements, they are just not ambitious enough to reach the European Green Deal’s targets or to address environmental degradation in general. This is, for example, the case of the CAP rules and the Geographical Indications Regulation. These aspects will have to be addressed in the European Commission’s next mandate, if it is to take sustainability seriously.