N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
MEP’s were furious that the Commission put an important study for half a year ‘in somebody’s draw in an office’ to keep it away from the EP. The JRC (Joint Research Centre) study, an evaluation of the Commission’s food policy called the Farm to Fork strategy, was published mid-August but was clearly earmarked for publication in January. A note dated 13 January addressed to the Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski read: ‘The study has now been cleared’.
EP rapporteur on the Farm to Fork strategy, Herbert Dorfmann, said it was ‘quite obvious’ that the Commission didn’t want to publish this study, so did it ‘in the middle of summer, so nobody would read it’. The discovery that the study was ready months before official publication made MEP’s even more angry.
MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen mentioned that the Commission was pressuring the EP to make the Farm to Fork strategy targets binding and to conclude the negotiations of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) while ‘concealing’ the results of the study. “Throughout those negotiations, this study was put in somebody’s drawer in an office. But it is really going to have an impact on farmers and consumers’, he said. His colleague MEP Clara Aguilera, ‘we need to clarify the issue’. MEP Gilles LeBreton said he was ‘scandalised’ adding that the Commission was ‘sneaky’ because the impact assessment announces ‘catastrophic consequences for agriculture’.
And where is it all about? The report concludes that environmental improvements of the Farm to Fork strategy would be accompanied by a 10% reduction of EU supply for agricultural products, reaching a maximum of 15% reduction for meats.
It makes me think of Niccolo Machiavelli, who once wrote ‘The end justifies the means’. May be the new way of working for the Commission?
