Copa Cogeca, the umbrella group of EU farm organisations, has warned that farmers seeking to highlight their environmental practices could face a potential “double penalty” under the Green Claims Directive.
The directive is under discussion by the European Parliament, and would regulate the use of claims of environmental sustainability, and prevent the use of such claims if they lack scientific backing. This would apply to all businesses in all sectors, and not just farmers.
The directive passed the committee stage of the European Parliament yesterday, receiving overwhelming backing by the Internal Market and Environment Committee by 85 votes to two (with 14 abstentions).
However, the Green Claims Directive (if it is approved) in addition to environmental verification processes under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) would give rise to a “double verification” process farmers would have to go through to communicate their environmental practices, according to Copa.
Copa claimed this would make farmers “think twice” before adopting environmental practices.
Reacting to the committee vote, Copa warned that the amendments adopted by the committee “hide the risk for farmers for a double verification on voluntary environmental practices”.
“Farmers who already comply with the CAP additional, voluntary environmental practices (eco-schemes or agri-ecological measures), for which a verification process already exists, will be required to repeat the verification if they decide to communicate on them,” Copa said.
The parliament’s agriculture committee had suggested an amendment that would consider participation in eco-schemes as meeting the requirements of the Green Claims Directive for farmers. However, this did not make it into the text adopted by the Internal Markets and Environment Committee yesterday.
Copa said that the adopted position on the Green Claims Directive by the committee is “in full contradiction” to recent comments from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that indicated a desire from the commission to reduce the red tape farmers deal with.
The position adopted yesterday would allow businesses to measures for offsetting carbon emissions (such as tree planting) when making environmental claims, but only if direct emissions from the business had already been reduced as much as possible.
Copa welcomed the allowance for carbon-offsetting schemes, but said that the condition for their use as part of validating environmental practices “will prevent farmers from fully enjoying the framework established under the certification for carbon removals”.
The farm organisation said it hoped that the plenary (full) session of the parliament would adopt the suggestions from the agriculture committee when it votes on the directive next month.