Emmanuel Macron’s EU election campaign, dubbed Renaissance, finally released its manifesto for the European election taking place later [in May 2019]. As befits a nation …. which remains Europe’s top agricultural powerhouse, many sections of the manifesto deal explicitly with food and farming.
Renaissance is pledging an EU ban on glyphosate and to halve the use of all pesticides by 2025 …. Halving pesticide use in a handful of years is ambitious …. More problematic is the push to ban glyphosate entirely. Such a decision would be formally taken by national governments, inside the European Commission’s secretive standing committee on plants, animals, food and feed. The European Parliament has little say.
Renaissance also wants to create a chemical and pesticide approval system that is “more transparent and independent of lobbies.” Plus, it’s suggesting a crack sanitary protection squad to prevent food fraud ….
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Macron’s plans sound much more radical than the Commission’s …. The party’s calling for a “massive increase in greening,” with a doubling of the amount of organic farmland and a guarantee that zero animals will be fed with GMOs.
Read full, original article: POLITICO Pro Morning Agri and Food: Unfair trading practices — Macron’s farm plan — CAP climate report (Behind paywall)
