Rushed rollback of EU green farming rules triggers dismay

The Commission took mere weeks to draft the proposal, working at the behest of national authorities and consulting only with farmers who are subject to the rules. It did not perform an impact assessment — a gold standard for quality legislation, according to its own rulebook — nor did it talk to civil society groups representing the interests of the broader public.

“The unraveling of [the CAP] will be done on the sly,” Green MEP Benoît Biteau wrote on X. “In the end, farmers, nature and democracy lose.”

Of the four farm groups consulted by the Commission, two have since criticized the way the proposal was drawn up, accusing the EU executive of using their participation in the consultation to justify changes that will “most likely result in lowering the CAP’s environmental delivery and, ultimately, its legitimacy.”

But with the rural vote possibly crucial in the June EU election, only lawmakers from the left of the aisle have berated the Commission for its haste to unravel the green strands within the bloc’s farm subsidy budget.

“I don’t share this opinion,” said center-right Italian lawmaker Herbert Dorfmann, who leads the European People’s Party, the Parliament’s largest group, on agricultural issues. “It is not for me to judge the Commission.”