European Economic and Social Committee
The SUD can play a central role in the European Green Deal framework, being crucial to the Commission's Farm-to-Fork strategy for shifting to a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system, and complementary to both the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Zero Pollution Strategy.
The EU chemicals strategy aims to address the cumulative and combined effects of chemicals, including pesticides, stressing a need to accelerate work on methodologies that ensure existing provisions can be fully implemented.
The strategy is intended as a first step towards a zero pollution ambition for a toxic-free environment, as announced in the European Green Deal.
The Commission is undertaking a series of evaluations of the Common Agricultural Policy for the timeframe 2014-2020, assessing performance against the CAP's general objectives. Since the evaluation targets CAP socioeconomic impacts, representing a wide-ranging scope, the EESC provided a complementary evaluation focusing on five countries whose selection has been made together with the Commission in order to maximise complementarity and added value to the EC evaluation.
The national provisions governing seed harvested and controlled in those countries afford the same assurances as the provisions applicable to seed harvested and controlled within the European Union as regards the seed's characteristics and the arrangements for :
Ukraine has submitted a request that its cereal seed is covered by Council Decision 2003/17/EC as equivalent.
The EESC strongly supports the Commission's proposal – Next Generation EU – as a specific tool for a quick and effective recovery.
The EESC takes a very positive view of the Commission's two main decisions:
The EESC strongly welcomes the fact that the newly proposed instrument should be closely coordinated with the European Semester process, and furthermore welcomes the Commission's proposal to introduce additional genuine own resources based on different taxes (revenues from the EU Emissions Trading System, digital taxation, large companies' revenues).
The new CAP comes with significant changes. Transitional rules are needed to ensure a smooth transition from the current to the next CAP period.