BRUSSELS — When Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the conclusions of her Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture last month, it looked like a PR coup. The seven-month forum on agri-food policy had calmed both riotous farmers and outraged NGOs, while yielding an apparently balanced report that she could loot for legislative ideas.
Yet that success may be short-lived. Copa-Cogeca — Europe’s largest and most influential agricultural lobby — is hardening its position, POLITICO has learned. The group’s national members were outraged by some of the dialogue’s final recommendations, particularly the need to promote plant-based diets.
After a raucous month in which members repeatedly blasted the Copa-Cogeca presidency — at a farm event in Hungary, in emails to its Brussels office and at the Copa presidium on Sept. 26 — the umbrella group wants to beef up its bargaining power at the European Board on Agri-Food (EBAF), the proposed successor to the Strategic Dialogue.
“In the Strategic Dialogue, just five out of 29 participants were farmers,” Copa-Cogeca wrote in a Sept. 20 letter to the Commission, obtained by POLITICO. “At least half of the Board should be composed of participants representing the farming world, and Copa and Cogeca … should be granted a stronger presence in comparison to other actors.”
The group also called for the inclusion of bodies representing “livestock and crops sectorial organisations, inputs [and] agriculture machinery,” as well as a shift from the fast-paced, confidential and person-to-person talks towards a slower, more transparent, and organization-based format.
“What we really need to focus on is making it work for farmers because that, from my point of view, was the initial objective of the dialogue: it was a reaction to farmers’ protest,” said Jan Doležal, the president of the Czech AKČR agrarian chamber. Looking forward, “we’ll work to improve our negotiation position,” he told POLITICO.
That’s going to be a problem as von der Leyen seeks to convert the conclusions of the dialogue into a “Vision” for the future of EU agriculture — one of several action plans she has promised to deliver within 100 days of her new Commission being sworn in.
The 29-stakeholder dialogue sought to overcome the extreme polarization of von der Leyen’s first term, encouraging compromise and trust between a motley crew of agricultural associations, food manufacturers and retailers, environmentalists, academics, and financiers. Participants mostly came alone, ate together, and shared stories about themselves and their families.
Stacking the EBAF with farmers will likely be seen as a unilateral power grab, breaking the tentative cease-fire and tipping Europe’s agri-food sector into turbulence once more. Likewise, converting the nimble talks into rigid meetings, where envoys run every suggestion through their bulky membership lists, will kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Factor in grumpy European lawmakers and capitals, both upset at being excluded from the process, and the results of von der Leyen’s unorthodox farm talks could end up having a short shelf life.
Mexican standoff in Brussels
Since its announcement in January, the Strategic Dialogue had ticked along nicely. With its members sworn to secrecy, it was hard to gauge how things were going, but everyone seemed reasonably satisfied. There were no major leaks and participants praised the constructive atmosphere and optimistic outlooks.
By late August, negotiations had entered the final phase and people started to sweat. The dialogue’s conclusions were meant to be unanimous and Peter Strohschneider, the German historian who moderated the debate, began to apply pressure to reluctant delegates. He told one group of holdouts that he would keep on chairing meetings for as long as it took, recalled one participant.
When the 100-page report was published on Sept. 4, everyone scrambled to claim victory. NGOs trumpeted how it supported the EU’s recently-adopted nature restoration law. Consumer groups celebrated its food labeling and fair pricing sections. Young, organic and smallholder farmers highlighted the bits on reforming the EU farm budget, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
Copa-Cogeca, the traditional behemoth of Brussels agri-food, struggled to sell it across the bloc though. “Really dangerous” is how Coldiretti, Italy’s largest farmer union, judged the recommendation for the CAP to prioritize smaller farmers. “I don’t like that at all,” said the head of the Dutch LTO on the need to decarbonize diets. Overall, the text “falls well short of expectations,” sniffed the president of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV).
France’s FNSEA remained silent. Neither the organization nor its outspoken president, Arnaud Rousseau, posted a word about the report on its website or X account. That was despite the fact its former president is Christiane Lambert, one of the three Copa-Cogeca leaders who signed the conclusions and who uploaded a mass of posts about it on social media.
That week, most Copa member representatives were in Budapest for a farm conference. “This was our first chance to discuss it together,” said one participant, granted anonymity to speak freely. “There was unhappiness at part of it, particularly in relation to diets and consideration of alternative diets and plant proteins … anything essentially that would go against our position on livestock.”
Two days after the report’s publication, four Copa members from the Visegrad countries — Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary — shot a highly critical letter at the secretariat. It demanded Copa-Cogeca retrospectively reject the report’s conclusions and withdraw from the Strategic Dialogue entirely.
“After 20 years of membership of the European Union and of the Copa-Cogeca family, we thought that our differences would be understood and safeguarded,” the four wrote in the letter obtained by POLITICO.
“We expected the Copa-Cogeca Secretariat and Presidents to take a more cautious position and to insist on discussing the very sensitive and often controversial conclusions” with members, they complained: “The process was very non-transparent, especially in the last three days of the negotiations, when we had zero opportunity to intervene.”
The group’s leadership tried to smooth things over. At the Copa presidium on Sept. 26, they assured unions the document was just a starting point. Some were assuaged. “I think people have accepted it with caveats, people are willing to move on,” said the participant present in Budapest.
Others were not. POLITICO spoke to one attendee who argued the lobby showed a lack of courage during the dialogue and its endorsement is not easily reversible. Von der Leyen wants the report to guide future legislation and has explicitly tasked her designated agriculture commissioner, Christophe Hansen, with following up on its proposals.
What happens now
There’s disagreement over whether Copa-Cogeca could still withdraw from future talks. In a statement to POLITICO, the secretariat said that “the Strategic Dialogue is a report, not a legally binding agreement, so the question of a general withdrawal doesn’t apply.”
Both Doležal, the Czech farm boss, and the representative present in Budapest agreed with that idea, though for different reasons. Doležal, one of the four signatories of the Visegrad letter, told POLITICO that “I don’t think this will be on the table actually,” since Copa-Cogeca’s subsequent letter to the Commission has appeased him.
The representative from Budapest was more pragmatic. “We’ve got a new secretary-general, Ellie Tsiforou: I don’t think it will be in her interests after her first couple of weeks … to announce that the farmers are” out, and risk immediately alienating von der Leyen, they reflected.
Not everyone got the memo though.
Any breach of the principle of consensus — such as signing a trade deal with South America or proposing a new pesticide reduction law — would mean trouble, warned José María Castilla, the head of Spain’s largest farmer union Asaja. “If [the EU] doesn’t comply with the agreement, we will be back on the streets,” he told POLITICO.
