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EU Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans wants Greta Thunberg and other activists to fight for a climate-friendly farming policy, despite refusing to scrap the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform they’ve lambasted for not being green enough.
In a Monday call that ran overtime, Timmermans told Thunberg and other youth campaigners that he didn’t have enough public backing to deliver on their demands to withdraw the Commission’s proposal to revamp the CAP — despite acknowledging the likely outcome was “far from perfect,” according to Maximilian Herzog, one of the activists on the call. It’s the third time Timmermans has delivered a similar message.
“We don’t expect him to withdraw the CAP, as he said he would not have enough support for that,” Thunberg said, accusing the man in charge of EU climate policy of “not treating the crisis like a crisis.”
But she conceded climate activists needed to convince the public. “We know that the changes will not come from inside, from negotiations, from politicians discussing these things with lobbyists. The changes will come when there is enough public opinion, that enough people are aware and are pushing for change” she said.
That’s a big demand for a program that gobbles up a third of the bloc’s budget and is an economic mainstay for millions of politically powerful farmers.
An EU official said Timmermans had “pointed to the importance of public mobilization in support of ambitious climate action to convince politicians and decision-makers to act.”
Others on the call were less forgiving. “He said, ‘It’s the people, the people aren’t ready for it,’ and I think that’s utter bullshit,” said Sommer Ackerman, a Finland-based British climate activist.
“The people are ready,” said Ackerman. Rather, she said it was Europe’s powerful farming lobby standing against sound climate policy.
Powerful farmers
Speaking at a webinar last week, Timmermans said: “Reform is extremely difficult. I know that because there are so many vested interests.”
Talks on the CAP are entering what could be their endgame, with a climactic round of talks between MEPs and national ministers taking place in Brussels on May 25 and 26. They will cover hefty topics like how many billions of euros will be available for new, voluntary eco-schemes and how strictly to set basic environmental conditions for farmers to receive subsidies.
Advocates for greener reforms in the Parliament are worried that the talks are being set up to bulldoze their concerns and have accused the Commission of failing to propose compromises.
Few politicians working on climate change pass what some refer to as the “Greta test.” But criticism from the world’s most prominent climate activist over farming reforms is a particularly painful point for Timmermans, especially since the Dutchman has cultivated Thunberg as an ally.
It also exposes the limits of his remit. “We see Timmermans putting pressure on the Council, really playing hardball, but it’s not the Commission that takes decisions,” said Jeroen Candel, an assistant professor in food and agriculture policy at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
The EU Green Deal is intended to be the carbon yardstick against which all other policies are measured. But many worry that agriculture, producing 10 percent of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, will be allowed to stay exempt from the broader drive to make the Continent carbon neutral by 2050.
Timmermans threatened last year to hit the nuclear button and withdraw the CAP proposal, but was forced to retreat after his boss Ursula von der Leyen said she wasn’t going to do it.
“In a way it’s undemocratic,” Candel said of the pressure on Timmermans. “You may not like the outcome but this is how European decision-making works.” If climate activists succeed in scrapping the CAP, that could prompt farming interest groups to try to scuttle any more environmentally ambitious replacement proposal, he warned.
The academic said that despite all the criticism from climate activists, the European Commission is making a more ambitious push to align the CAP with the Green Deal than the Council and the Parliament, where “agricultural hard-liners” oppose a greener reform.
“I think the Commission is the environmental motor of the three institutions,” he said, adding that activists should focus their attention on national farming ministries that are currently drafting plans for how they will implement the new CAP.
The campaigners plan to ramp up pressure. “We are not lobbyists and we are not asking for compromises or negotiations, all we are doing is … using our platforms,” said Thunberg.
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