2024-09-05 17:19:35
To reduce meat consumption in the European Union, Brussels plans to raise taxes. According to the EC, animal husbandry pollutes the environment no less than coal and therefore does not give up measures and incentives to reduce meat consumption. At the same time, the EC is preparing new rules for subsidizing EU farmers in response to violent protests earlier this year. The EU is due to overhaul its common agricultural policy worth 387 billion euros, and the main change being discussed is that in future farmers will be subsidized based on their income rather than the size of their holdings.
Guidelines for an “overhaul” of the Common Agricultural Policy were presented to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday. They were reached after consultations between farmers, NGOs, consumers and food retailers, which culminated in three marathon negotiating sessions during the day and night last week.
Limiting meat consumption through taxes
Encouraging consumers to reduce the amount of meat they eat is among other suggestions in the report. This will happen through tax incentives and labeling. Among the aims is to get farmers to give up livestock farming, including through a controversial proposal to introduce voluntary farm buyout schemes in areas with a high level of intensive livestock farming.
Among the discussed schemes to reduce meat consumption is the idea of taxing meat products with an additional tax in addition to VAT and making them more expensive for consumers.
Examples of such a tax already a fact. Denmark has already introduced a carbon tax of €100 per cow.
Farm subsidies not for the number of acres, but depending on income
The main recommendation is to overhaul the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy subsidy scheme, which was first introduced in 1962 and consumes a third of the bloc’s multi-annual budget.
Instead of granting direct aid to farmers according to the size of the land they own and tying it to mandatory environmental standards, the report recommends that subsidies should be given to “active farmers who need them most”, on basis of their “economic viability”, says the Financial Times.
Von der Leyen told reporters that previously farmers felt they were being “micro-controlled”, mediapool reports. She will “scrutinize the recommendations in the report” and it will be included in the “vision” for agriculture and food that will be set out in the first 100 days of the new European Commission, which is due to start meeting later this year.
The dialogues were announced by von der Leyen as part of her centre-right European People’s Party’s campaign to farmers ahead of European Parliament elections in June, as rural voters appear to be turning to more extreme political groups.
The report was overseen by German academic Prof. Peter Stroschneider, who chaired a similar consultation in Germany in 2021.
Stroshnider said of the CAP’s recommendation that “public funds should not be spent on those who do not need them” and defended the paper’s proposal to reduce meat consumption by comparing it to speed limits, which also limit individual freedoms.
The current environmental standards under the Common Agricultural Policy were temporarily suspended by the Commission following farmers’ protests in the spring of this year, which saw tires burned, statues pulled down outside the European Parliament and manure spread on the streets of EU capitals.
The report proposes that farmers receive incentives under the CAP to green their practices, as well as a “Just Transition Fund”, which is outside the CAP budget and is intended for longer-term changes, such as moving farms to “regenerative” or biological methods. A package of loans in the amount of up to 3 billion euros from the European Investment Bank should be provided, which should be directed primarily to young farmers.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, food production and distribution are responsible for between 21 and 37% of greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the criteria measured. More than half of these emissions are due to livestock production.