EU solidarity with Ukraine was the overwhelming focus of European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address on 14 September, as the war reached a potential turning point. With a lightening Ukrainian counteroffensive liberating Kharkiv, von der Leyen clearly needed to send a strong message of support. But the Ukraine and energy crisis-dominated speech neglected other pressing challenges at a summit intended to set out the bloc’s broader policy agenda.
Cybersecurity, green transport and long-term environmental solutions received only passing mention, raising questions over the progress to come on these crucial issues. However, the food crisis was the most glaring oversight, particularly given the energy crisis’s impact on agri-food producers and consumers. Over the difficult months ahead, the EU must ensure that its interventions go further than this speech suggests, crucially by adapting and innovating its agri-food policy to meet unprecedented challenges.
Rightly connecting the two crises, Josep Borrell, the EU top diplomat, stressed to reporters at September’s UN General Assembly that the “the high energy and food prices caused by the war have generated an incipient financial crisis.”
Yet the EU remains stubbornly committed to its “Farm to Fork” (F2F) strategy, whose aim to build a sustainable, healthy European food system is undermined by misguided policies. F2F’s organic farming targets – including halving chemical pesticide use, cutting synthetic fertiliser by 20% and farming 25% of agricultural land organically by 2030 – reveal an ideological, scientifically dubious approach that would significantly cut the bloc’s food production at a time of shortages and inflation.
