EU

PES defends Timmermans’ Green Deal and sustainable farming against far-right propaganda

May 7, 2024
PES

Archive photo of the former European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans during a farm visit in 2023.

Sustainable farming is the future and the only guarantee for long-term food security. The European Green Deal was promoted as the flagship policy of this European Commission mandate: a plan to promote sustainable farming, protect health, and protect the planet for generations to come.

Italian agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida claimed yesterday that ‘some things aren’t coincidence’, as according to him the social democrat architect of the European Green Deal – former European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans – deliberately created farming rules ‘so rigid that they reduce European food production to what it was in the 1600s’ so that ‘Europe’s food would be imported through Rotterdam’.

PES Secretary General Giacomo Filibeck said:

“The Italian agriculture minister is right: some things aren’t a coincidence. It is no coincidence that Frans Timmermans promoted the Green Deal and sustainable farming. Not because he was Dutch, but because he was one of the only European leaders to truly look after the next generations.

“It is climate change that will reduce European food production to what it was in the 1600s, not sustainable farming. You cannot grow food in dead soil. To deliberately undermine sustainable farming is to deliberately increase our dependency on imports.

‘’We are for a battle of ideas, not personal attacks. These sorts of slanderous statements clearly show that the minister of agriculture has not understood the serious threat climate change poses to Europe’s food security.”