Commission targets reform of its food chain rules in 2026
Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
The European Commission is preparing an overhaul of legislation on unfair trading practices (UTPs) to prevent farmers from selling below production cost.
The EU executive announced this week that it will launch a consultation on the revision this autumn with the aim of presenting a proposal a year later.
In his blueprint for the agri-food sector, EU farm chief Christophe Hansen promised that the Commission would overhaul the UTPs directive to address one of farmers' key concerns: not covering production costs.
Not everyone welcomed the announcement, with EU supermarket lobby Eurocommerce saying that the Commission should not have pre-empted the outcome of the ongoing evaluation of the rules, due to be completed in November.
The directive currently distinguishes between 'black' and 'grey' unfair market practices – the former being unconditionally prohibited, such as payment delays of one month, and the latter permitted if agreed between parties, such as the return of unsold products.
Some farmer organisations have long called on Brussels to tighten up the rules by including the purchase of agricultural products below production cost in one of the two categories.
Countries including Belgium, Croatia, France and Spain have similar measures in place.
But in a debate at the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) in June, member states could not agree on what to do with the colour scheme.
In parallel, EU lawmakers are currently working on a 'quick fix' to the UTPs directive that the Commission proposed last December. The goal is to ensure cross-border enforcement and tackle international purchasing alliances.
The Council reached an agreement on the proposal in April and the Parliament's AGRI committee adopted its position last month. MEPs wants to kick-start institutional talks as soon as the plenary gives its green light in September.
(jp)
CORRECTION: This story's headline has been changed to reflect the fact that the legislation is due to land in late 2026.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Euractiv
an hour ago
- Euractiv
Europe should use its mega-deals to turn the democratic malaise
Sam van der Staak is Director for Europe at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). Kevin Arceneaux is Director of Sciences Po's Centre for Political Research (CEVIPOF). The European Commission is preparing its Democracy Shield amid overall citizen gloom about democracy. Poll after opinion poll shows that ever fewer people, including young people , support democracy – only about a third of youth according to a recent survey . Support for illiberal populists continues to rise in Europe , while 35% of Gen-Z and millennials lean towards strongman government. This begs the question: Will the EU's Democracy Shield be protecting what citizens relish or what they reject? As is so often the case with surveys, there's more than meets the eye. Research shows that populist-leaning citizens prefer not less but more democracy, albeit a more efficient version of it. When asked if they want strong leaders who listen to ordinary people, it turns out that many of them agree. But they also support seeking consensus with opponents. Such populist voters – about a quarter of Europeans – stand out from the ten percent of authoritarian-leaning Europeans, who equally desire strong leaders but abhor the idea of obeying the average folk. In other words, although populist voters are less satisfied with democracy than mainstream democrats, they are not opposed to it. What they do want is elected leaders to be in control, especially on the economy. And there's the surprise. Over the past months, European leaders have made unprecedentedly large economic choices. Last week's EU-US trade deal alone includes €700 billion in energy purchases and €550 billion in economic investments. Europe's rearmament plan of last March pumps €800 billion into the security sector. And the EU's new multiyear budget rigorously shifts €410 billion from farmers and regions to innovation and economic competitiveness. If ever in its eighty-year existence Europe was being decisive, it is now. Still, citizens feel that politics is a stacked deck where 'There is no choice'. How come? It is because of something social scientists call 'relative deprivation'. When citizens feel their group is worse off than others, and that ordinary people are taken advantage of by a corrupt elite, they open up to populist leaders. This yearning for democratic fairness has little to do with absolute wellbeing. Even when their own prosperity stays unaltered, the mere sense that others gain more provokes a desire for strong leadership with fewer checks and balances. President Von der Leyen knows this. One year ago, she presented her second mandate's political guidelines with the bold title ' Europe's Choice '. Yet, on stage with President Trump in Scotland, she presented their trade deal as merely 'delivering stability and predictability' to Europe. Meanwhile, she depicted her populist opponent as a 'tough negotiator' and 'dealmaker'. Commentators , while acknowledging the outcome was the best Europe could get, reviled the submissive tone and ' Europe's humiliation '. In other words, Europeans did not dislike the deal but hated that Trump won more. Such letdowns risk losing voters for the very cause the EU's trade deal aims to sustain, its arms purchases try to protect, and its Democracy Shield hopes to revive: representative democracy. To reverse this sense of malaise, Europe should show citizens that democracy delivers, and that there is, in fact, a choice. The EU previously tried through citizen panels in its Conference on the Future of Europe. But reviving trust in democracy is not just about placing citizens in the driving seat. Most people want to know that there is an able driver at the steering wheel. The European Democracy Shield can help. First, by providing better democratic information. It can systematically collect citizen views on democracy in all member states, to inform leaders in making their decisions. Politicians should better understand the democratic expectations of their citizens, as well as the health of their democratic institutions. Second, the Shield could establish continuous leader-citizen communication on the state of democracy, at various political levels and across the twenty-seven member states. An annual pow-wow between EU leaders and the democracy community, backed by all the academic firepower of Europe's top researchers, would help keep EU leaders committed. Restoring trust in democracy is possible but requires more than a communication strategy. Politicians should better know what shapes voter trust. And voters should understand the tough choices leaders make to uphold their democracies. The Democracy Shield can serve that purpose.
Euractiv
20 hours ago
- Euractiv
Europeans ponying up to fund US weapons shipments to Ukraine
Germany is the latest European country to pledge money for a NATO-led scheme to keep US weapons flowing to Ukraine, as Europe struggles to deliver enough military hardware and munitions themselves. The European cash flowing to Washington – including Germany's pledge of €500 million on Wednesday to fund a weapons package for Ukraine – is solidifying US President Donald Trump's vision of making Europe pay for American aid to Kyiv, and underscoring how essential American military arsenals and weapons factories remain. 'There is no way around the US industry, as European stocks and the capacity of the defence industry are exhausted in the short term,' one NATO official told Euractiv, adding that 'the need for certain military supplies in Ukraine is immense'. Trump proposed the deal last month, after again complaining that the US has already spent far too much on supporting Ukraine. The Netherlands was the first to put money in, funding a US weapons package worth $500 million. Denmark, Sweden and Norway jointly put in another €500 million shortly afterwards. Under the scheme, known as the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), Kyiv details its greatest weaponry needs to NATO officials. That shopping list is checked with Washington for availability, and then bundled into delivery packages worth $500 for other NATO governments – in Canada and Europe – to finance. That means the alliance is now functioning as 'a kind of transaction account' for military aid, the NATO official said. A new way of support Data gathered by Germany's Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) already shows an increase in support coming from procurement even before the PURL arrangement got underway, at least partly because European arsenals have now been depleted by previous transfers to Ukraine. 'Unlike earlier in the war, when much of the aid came from donors' existing military stockpiles, Europe is now relying far more on new orders from the defence industry,' Taro Nishikawa, who leads IfW's Ukraine Support Tracker, told Euractiv. With the European defence industry still in its expansion phase, 'the PURL mechanism could potentially help address this challenge,' he said. A new wave of packages is expected to follow in September, according to the NATO official. Finland, the United Kingdom and Canada are among the countries that have shown interest in putting money into the effort. There's no timeline for how long the PURL effort might continue, according to the NATO official: "Its continuation depends on further developments in Ukraine, the political will of all parties involved and the availability of military capabilities on the US side.' (bts)
Euractiv
20 hours ago
- Euractiv
One AI company's battle against Europe's tech roadblocks
Germany's is, in many ways, a company made to win the hearts of EU lawmakers: Relatively young, doing business with established players and, most importantly, developing artificial intelligence. Co-founder Kai Kölsch tells Euractiv the company has been in the AI business since before US giant OpenAI launched its viral AI chatbot ChatGPT in 2022 – back when the technology was still simply called 'machine learning'. Now, like many other players in the AI field, Seedbox re-trains large language models (LLMs) developed by other companies – such as Google's Gemini or Meta's Llama – for its specific uses, for example a chatbot where patients can ask questions about their medication or an AI assistant for real estate appraisals. This is where 38-year-old Kölsch sees Europe's big chance: piggybacking on LLMs, rather than trying to clone them. 'We want to drive the [AI] field forward, take part in developing technology that makes technology more efficient,' he says. The Stuttgart native, still living in Germany's automotive capital, likens the situation to a car that's already on the road. Europe's tech field shouldn't be trying to reinvent the wheel, he suggests, but rather should focus its energy on improving the quality and efficiency of the drive. Of course, there are still bumps in the road for achieving this vision. Good projects for more hardware The first big problem for Europe's AI companies is that they do not have the same access to computing infrastructure as the US giants. Kölsch also says it would be good to have access to more of the coveted specialised chips needed for AI work – either for training or for running models. For Seedbox, there's a potential solution: The EU is currently building one of its AI factories in Stuttgart, designed to link startups and established industry players with the hardware to integrate AI into their offerings. The company is already cooperating with the computing centre where the factory is being set up, which allows it to train an AI model in all 24 official EU languages. But the new specialised chips will extend the possibilities, says Kölsch. And while he welcomes plans for far larger gigafactories also planned in the EU, Kölsch argues that these should be concentrated as tightly as possible to be useful for training new foundational models, in the vein of Google's Gemini or Meta's Llama. The Commission already split up the original 'AI CERN' idea into five separate gigafactories, which governments and companies are now debating to divide up even further. Dial down the rules Kölsch also has his doubts about EU regulation, specifically the AI Act. He'd like to see it delayed because of the effect he reckons it's having on established companies. 'They would rather do nothing than do something wrong,' he says. 'Doing nothing is the worst thing you can do right now.' The past months have seen several calls to delay European AI rules, with a parallel discussion about whether, and how much, they should be watered down as part of the Commission's ongoing digital simplification drive. While the EU executive was late in delivering key supporting documents for the AI Act – and some detail is still missing – most countries are also delayed in announcing which authorities will be responsible for implementing the Act in their territory, amplifying the legal uncertainty. 'That's where we need really clear signals', Kölsch says. 'Like, you won't be flogged and thrown into jail if you mess up. You just have to start now.' The bloc's data protection law, also often singled out by critics for blocking European companies, is also set to be – at least in part – simplified. Money, money, money But Kölsch highlights one particular issue as central to Europe's problems: 'At the end of the day, the key point is capital,' he tells Euractiv. There is a vast gulf between the sums of money pumped into tech in Europe vs in the US, even though the two economies are broadly comparable in size. Key to this is venture capital for young and innovative tech companies. Such investments are higher risk but also have enormous growth potential. According to numbers from the European Investment Bank, US companies receive six to eight times more venture capital investments than European startups. There are many, often-reported, reasons for the lack of cash. To pick just two: There are rules preventing big institutional investors like pension funds from putting money into venture because of the inherent risks. What's more, the bloc is not a single financial sector, it's 27 small ones, which don't work well enough in funnelling cash to promising start-ups. 'It's absurd that we want to finance Europe and at the same time European pension funds are investing in US bonds', says Andreas Schwarzenbrunner from Speedinvest, an EU venture fund. 'The money is there, Europe is still very rich', he continues – 'it's simply invested in the wrong channels.' Schwarzenbrunner is quick to point out that Europe has made significant progress after realising it missed the boat for thirty years. There is now a working ecosystem for financing young companies. Still, European tech companies face big problems in accessing financing – both for building prototypes and then, once they have proven the tech, for expanding, optimally across the EU. Even if they manage to do so, US Big Tech is lurking with many billions in cash which they will gladly use to snap up (and close down) promising start-ups. Kölsch says that is already being courted by non-European companies like AMD and Nvidia while European ones are failing to keep up with the speed of technical innovation. 'No company in Germany... really understands what we do', he says. 'Who understands us is the Americans.' Talent follows money This connects to another problem that EU and national governments have wrestled with for years: talent. currently has 15 employees and is recruiting a new AI engineer – as are other European companies, with many struggling to find staff. To boost the potential workforce, the EU made 2023 a 'Year of skills', with a strategy on a 'Union of Skills' that aimed for one in three university students to enrol in STEM degrees by 2030 – which are foundational for AI development. 'By offering world-class education and research infrastructure, competitive career prospects, and a supportive regulatory and funding environment, the EU can become a destination of choice for the brightest minds,' the skills strategy reads. But it's hard to compete when Big Tech is dangling eye-watering salaries to reel in AI talent. Top researchers have reportedly been offered first-year pay packages of more than €100 million to join Meta. Meanwhile, the word 'salary' does not appear in the EU's Union of Skills strategy. 'We can't allow ourselves to complain that we can't educate talent,' says Kölsch. 'Talent just goes to where the capital is.' (nl, jp, ow)
