Brussels, Belgium
April 22, 2020
Today, the EU is the largest importer and exporter of agri-food products in the world. This success is based on the strong integration of its agriculture and wider agri-food chain, including plant breeding, global research, development, production, supply and distribution chains. The current COVID crisis and its far-reaching implications have severe impact on all related sectors already today and will continue to have significant consequences in the medium and long term.
Consequently, Euroseeds is of the opinion that Europe must thoroughly analyse the general and specific vulnerabilities of the EU’s agri-food chain both to the COVID situation as well as to possible future international crisis, and how to promote the economic recovery of the affected sectors.
This assessment must specifically be taken into account in the upcoming Farm to Fork and 2030 Biodiversity strategies and address food security, food safety, international market issues, environmental and other relevant policy objectives in a coherent manner.
Euroseeds therefore strongly supports the Chair of the EP COMAGRI, MEP Norbert Lins, and his request to postpone the publication of both strategies, reconsider them in a more pragmatic way and to publish them together, given the many linkages between both of them: https://twitter.com/LinsNorbert/status/1250726205189480450
This would allow the strategies to play a decisive role in the quick and strong recovery for European agriculture and plant breeding sectors.
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