European Union News - Agriculture & Fisheries

The Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting ended with the Ministers agreement on a general approach for the two main regulation proposals of the common fisheries policy (CFP) reform "package". This general approach constitutes a political agreement within the Council pending the future first-reading position of the European Parliament.

The European Court of Auditors’ (ECA) performance audit presented that assessed the progress achieved to date on the reform of the common organisation of the market in wine makes a set of recommendations to the European Commission. The Court considers among other things that the aid rates were set at too high levels and that the scheme could therefore have been more efficient by achieving more significant results with the resources made available.

The European Commission on behalf of the EU signed an agreement with China in order to give a new impetus to their partnership and bring mutual benefits by establishing a stronger and closer relationship in agriculture, so that we tackle bilateral and international challenges more effectively together.

The special report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) highlights that the modernisation of agricultural holdings has greater potential if funds were better targeted to EU priorities and Member States’ specific needs. In addition to this, it concludes that the procedures for establishing the viability and sustainability of a holding or investment project were not effective in all Member States.

The European Commission published a report from the European Competition Network (ECN) which shows that active enforcement of competition law in the food sector across Europe, in particular at the processing and manufacturing levels, has benefited farmers, suppliers and consumers. From 2004 to 2011, European competition authorities have investigated more than 180 antitrust cases.

MEPs approved a report which gives green light to the incorporation into EU law of new international measures to further reduce illegal catches of bluefin tuna. On the other hand, the European Parliament also backed the new deal with Mozambique. Thanks to the new agreement, 75 EU vessels from Spain, France, Portugal, Italy and the UK will get fishing licenses.

The GRATITUDE project that counts with EU funding, seeks new ways of reducing waste during the production of food crops vital to families in parts of Africa and Asia. The main objective of this project is helping the world's poorest people in some of the most deprived regions.

The Agriculture Committee at the European Parliament celebrated a debate in which a majority of MEPs agreed on the need to introduce other measures, such as support for local slaughterhouses and meat processing plants besides cutting transport time to eight hours to animals. The main objective is to reach the maximum welfare of animals in transport, according to MEPs.