The Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting concluded with the doubt to reach a further agreement on the distribution of food products for the most deprived in the UE. In addition, the ministers discussed the energy use of biomass of agricultural origin and were briefed on the crisis in the fruit and vegetables sector and on the complementary national direct payments in 2012.

Following the Council meeting held by the Agriculture and Fisheries ministers, the Polish Presidency of the EU could not secure a majority in favour of the Commission proposal on the food products for the most deprived proposal. Some delegations, forming a blocking minority, expressed a reservation on this text as regards the legal basis for this text, which in their view should be drawn from social policy rather than agricultural policy. Other delegations expressed concerns with the co-financing of the measure. However despite of these positions the Presidency hopes to find a compromise in the weeks to come.

The Commission proposed to amend the current rules in 2008 and the Council were briefed on this in 2008. In this proposal, food would be sourced either from intervention stocks or from the market but the latter source would no longer be limited in situations of temporary unavailability of intervention stocks, as is currently the case. Moreover, the fade-out of intervention stocks, due to the reframing of the common agricultural policy (CAP) and high prices for agricultural commodities, has already increased the current scheme's reliance on market purchases for the provision of food. The proposal also introduced co-financing of the scheme and a ceiling for the financial contribution of the Union. In 2010, a newly amended proposal introduced a reshaping of the text to bring it into line with the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. It proposed a change in the rules for co-financing with an increase of the Union’s contribution and that financing sources in the Member States can be either public-sector or private.

On the other hand, Agriculture and Fisheries ministers also exchanged views on the energy use of biomass of agricultural origin. In this case, all delegations welcomed the initiative from the Presidency to initiate a debate on how agriculture should contribute to the objectives of the Strategy 2020 concerning climate change. As main conclusions on this topic, the ministers consider that the CAP, the European cohesion policy and energy policy should foster the development of dispersed energy generation units fuelled by biomass from agriculture. An EU-funded project has already showed that could be used to create jobs. However, the potential effects of biomass use on climate protection and greenhouse gas emission reductions should be assessed as well as other problems making it difficult to make full use of available by-products and residues from agriculture for energy purposes.