Copa-Cogeca's reaction to Euractiv's publication of evidence of the deliberate delay to publish the JRC technical report

In an article published yesterday, Euractiv showed that the long-awaited technical report on the Farm to Fork Strategy was ready to be published in January 2021. We very much regret this delay, during which the only study on the subject was American. This JRC report, could also have allowed the European Parliament and the Council, to have had preliminary discussions on the impact of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity targets based on concrete data, even considering the limitations of the JRC study. The European agricultural community was also never informed nor consulted during the whole process.

The arguments put forward by the Commissioner for Agriculture to justify this delay are far from convincing and add to the list of recent contradictions on this matter. This cannot hide the fact that the Commission still does not have a comprehensive impact assessment on such a key policy initiative. Currently, no one is discussing the solutions and the blind spots pointed out in the studies that have been released in the meantime, be they carbon leakage to third countries or inequalities in terms of access to food.

We are just as eager as the Commission to end this debate on the necessity to carry out a cumulative impact assessment. We will only acknowledge a comprehensive assessment because we want to understand where cumulative effects are likely to occur, so that we can finally move the discussion on from what seem to be arbitrary targets to debating concrete solutions based on facts and data.