As we’ve covered on Agriland this week, the EU will soon have a new agriculture chief to oversee its regulations and directives on farming in Europe.
Luxembourg’s Christophe Hansen will be the new European Commissioner for Agriculture. He will be in office during the development, and implementation, of a new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2027.
The outgoing commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, was responsible for securing final agreement on the current CAP, and carrying it into force, while the commissioner before him, Ireland’s Phil Hogan, was the one who brought forward the initial proposals on this CAP in 2018, with all the changes that brought about (convergence, front-loading of payment, eco-schemes, strategic plans, etc).
That CAP is set to expire in 2027, with the aim in Europe of having a new CAP ready to go as soon as possible after that.
The European Commission that is about to take power – the second under the leadership of President Ursula von der Leyen – will serve a five-year term until late 2029.
This means that the new man in agriculture, Hansen, will essentially be trying to do a job of work that his two predecessors shared between them – proposing changes to CAP; working with other EU institutions and member states to come to agreement on those proposals; and finally implementing and enforcing the new CAP from 2027 until the end of the current commission’s mandate.
When Phil Hogan proposed the CAP changes in 2018, we in Ireland knew all about him. But we know less about the man that will have that responsibility this time around. So who is Christophe Hansen and what is his background?
New EU agri commissioner
Hansen is a native of Luxembourg, and is from a farming background, which he alluded to during his confirmation hearings with MEPs this week.
He spoke about both his father and brother struggling with the paperwork of the farm, and also – while answering a question on mental health from Irish MEP Maria Walsh – spoke about the death of his brother in an accident, and the pressure he dealt with afterwards in minding the family’s affairs.
And speaking of his family, Luxembourg’s current minister for agriculture, Martine Hansen, is his cousin.
Hansen – who is fluent in English, French and German, and proficient in Spanish and Dutch – holds a Master’s Degree in Geosciences, Environmental Sciences and Risk Management.
He has been a member of the European Parliament since 2018, apart from a brief recent stint in Luxembourg’s national parliament.
As an MEP, he has served as rapporteur – an MEP appointed by a committee to handle a particular area of policy, consult stakeholders, and draft reports – on five separate policy areas, most notably on the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, but also on deforestation regulations and on the regulation of CAP strategic plans.
In his time in the European Parliament, he has served as a member or substitute member on a number of committees, including:
- Committee on International Trade;
- Committee on Employment and Social Affairs;
- Committee on Transport and Tourism;
- Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs;
- Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.
Hansen briefly stepped away from the European Parliament in October 2023 to run in Luxembourg’s general election, after which time he served in the country’s Chamber of Deputies as the chair of its committee on environment, climate and biodiversity, and as an ordinary member of the committee on agriculture and food, among other roles.
Hansen returned to the European Parliament at the 2024 elections, but was not there long, as he was shortly after nominated by the Luxembourg government for a commissioner role in circumstances that caused tension between the country’s political parties, some of whom wanted the incumbent commissioner to stay on for five more years.
On a party political level, he has held senior positions in both Luxembourg’s Christian Social People’s Party and the wider European People’s Party (EPP) putting him into close contact with MEPs from Fine Gael, which is part of that European Parliament grouping.
Outside of all this, Hansen has served in a number of other roles in European politics.
So he’s clearly a man familiar with European Politics, but we’ll have to wait and see how he navigates the waters of developing a new CAP, and how European farmers will react to it.