How to ensure the social, environmental and economic sustainability of the EU agri-food sector with future enlargement?

Key points:

The EESC:

• highlights that while this enlargement is different from all previous enlargements due to the exceptional current geopolitical circumstances, this should not be a reason to undermine the level of preparedness of the candidate countries, the importance of the needed legislative reforms and the respect of core EU values;
• emphasises the importance of security of supply in EU food production amid geopolitical tensions, and the need to ensure that all EU regions can maintain agricultural production in the future;
• highlights opportunities of this enlargement to better secure the EU’s strategic autonomy and further reduce the environmental footprint of the sector, but at the same time acknowledges the mixed outcomes of the previous enlargement, noting that there were winners and losers, with weak rural areas having benefited far less from the process than agglomerations, and the smaller European farms disappearing; therefore urges the European Commission and candidate Member States to consider and manage the impacts of enlargement specifically on family farms and agri-food small and medium enterprises both in the EU and in the candidate countries;
• stresses that candidate countries will have to align with the overall CAP objectives and values, while the CAP necessary reforms and the related financial framework will need to be agreed before the enlargement takes place;
• recommends a gradual replacement of the present CAP surface-based basic income support with financial incentives for services benefiting the environment and society, degressive payments, mandatory capping or increases for the first hectares for all Member States, and calls for agricultural and rural development policies to become further oriented towards a proximity economy, and for these principles to be transferred to the new candidate countries;
• calls for an increased CAP budget that must be dedicated to duly compensating for the negative effects on EU farmers, taking into account also potential social costs, meaning that the current net contributors will need to be ready to pay a higher proportion of their GDP to the EU in the new financial period, considering the net benefits for EU exporters of industrial goods and services while the agri-food sector will be undercut by the lower production costs of some of the newcomers;
• stresses the need for detailed and reliable data and urges the European Commission to closely monitor the agricultural production and the developments of the processes of reforms, including on land speculation;
• observes that the integration process has somehow already started, with EU markets opening to agricultural products from the candidate countries, creating potential disadvantages for EU countries that must be avoided through clear rules that the candidate countries must adhere to.

This opinion was elaborated with the participation of the following Enlargement Candidate Members:

• Gennadiy CHYZHYKOV (Group I), Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UCCI)
• Petro TULEI (Group II), Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine
• Yuriy STEPANETS (Group III), Association of Ukrainian Civic Initiatives