Europaudvalget 2021-22
EUU Alm.del Bilag 310
Offentligt
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Background note
Session 3
The challenges of European food sovereignty
With a keynote speech of Mr Norbert Lins, chairman of the European
Parliament Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development
Interparliamentary Conference on the strategic economic autonomy of
the European Union
Paris, 14 March 2022
 EUU, Alm.del - 2021-22 - Bilag 310: Invitation til interparlamentarisk konference om EU's økonomiske suverænitet 13-14/3-22
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Session 3
The challenges of European food sovereignty
The European Union’s food sovereignty has been of geo-strategic
importance for the Member States ever since the introduction of the
Common Agricultural Policy by the founding fathers.
Since then, the European Union, thanks to a solid self-sufficiency in food
production, has remained the world’s leading agricultural and food exporting
power, with a positive trade balance of around twenty billion euros.
The issue of food sovereignty has come to the fore once again through the
prism of environmental requirements, which are considered a condition of the
sustainability of an agricultural model and not an obstacle to it. By allowing a
reduction in the transport of foodstuffs in favour of more local food production
popular with consumers and citizens, whilst guaranteeing compliance with the
minimum environmental requirements applicable in Europe, which are the
strictest in the world, food sovereignty is a response to the need to reduce the
environmental footprint of the European consumer’s shopping basket.
However, the continent’s food sovereignty is today confronted with four
underlying trends:
•
stability of its total agricultural production in a context of world population
growth, which is the result of the reduction of its agricultural production
potential (renewal of generations, artificialisation of soils, etc.) and a
slowdown in agricultural productivity;
growth of imports from third countries, combined with a multiplication of
export crises, notably with the retaliation measures taken by Russia or
the United States;
citizens’ growing mistrust, particularly concerning the food industry, with
regard to the effects of international trade due to a lack of compliance
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 EUU, Alm.del - 2021-22 - Bilag 310: Invitation til interparlamentarisk konference om EU's økonomiske suverænitet 13-14/3-22
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•
with Europe’s health and environmental regulations by its trade partners,
which reduces the competitiveness of the European agri-food industry at
the risk of leading to its inevitable decline;
•
a re-localisation of food production demanded by consumers which
translates into particular attention being paid to the origin of food
products. Although this should increase convergence between European
agricultural models, differences in standards create a high level of
intra‑European competition within different sectors of the industry. At the
same time, origin labelling is banned by European regulations.
The Covid-19 crisis, followed by the sharp rise in agricultural commodity
prices, has finally revealed some areas where the continent is fragile:
for
example, the European Union imports 90% of its vegetable protein needs,
which jeopardises its autonomy even in livestock production.
In this context, does the “Farm to fork” strategy intended to be part of
the European Green Deal not risk jeopardising the continent’s agricultural
sovereignty by prioritising the objective of reducing the environmental
footprint? How can the continent’s position as an agricultural exporter be
reconciled with the requirement for the sovereignty and resilience of
European food production models? How can Europe’s agricultural
potential be consolidated to feed Europe and the world in years to come?
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