Eduardo González
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, announced yesterday before the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies that at the next Council of Agriculture Ministers of the European Union, which will be held on February 26 in Brussels, he will once again defend that “mirror clauses” are established in trade agreements with third countries to require that imported foods meet the same conditions as those produced within the Union.
Planas thus responded in the plenary session of the Lower House to a question from deputy Javier de Andrés Guerra, of the Popular Party, about the measures that the Government plans to adopt to protect the agri-food sector against “unfair competition” from third countries.
Likewise, the minister recalled that, among the Government’s commitments transferred to the agricultural professional organizations (Asaja, COAG and UPA) is the reinforcement of foreign health with the centralization of services and the improvement of the coordination of border control between the different States. members. According to the minister, all food products that enter the European Union are “perfectly controlled.” “We are the external border, along with the United States, which has the greatest number of controls and demands,” he assured.
In response to another question from deputy Pedro Ignacio Gallardo, of PP, about the Government’s response to the demands of Spanish farmers, Planas explained the 18 measures that he proposed last Thursday to agricultural professional organizations, mainly in terms of compliance and improvement. of the food chain law, regulatory simplification and the requirements of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and trade with third countries.
Precisely, Luis Planas announced on February 12, during an interview on Onda Cero, that he will bring to the next EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council a proposal to simplify the Common Agricultural Policy, whose 2021 reform is among the current protests of workers in the European agricultural sector.
The last reform of the CAP, carried out in 2021, introduced a series of changes that have generated discomfort among farmers’ associations, such as the establishment of “eco-schemes”, a system of incentives for agricultural holdings to carry out aligned environmental practices. with the EU objectives. According to agricultural organizations, these requirements hinder both agricultural activity and its profitability because they condition the granting of CAP aid, lead to an increase in bureaucratic burdens and entail guidelines that reduce the productivity of farms.
In Congress, Planas assured that the Government is willing to respond to the concerns and problems of farmers and ranchers. “No one is going to stop us in dialogue, in work, or in commitment to the agricultural sector,” he said.
Luis Planas’s intervention began with a small scare, since, at the moment he was about to speak, he suffered dizziness that forced him to stop talking and sit in his seat. Seconds later, he stood up again and assured that it had been “just vertigo,” and that he was in a position to respond to the Popular Parliamentary Group. The session subsequently continued as normal.
