In her annual state of the union address to Members of the European Parliament this week, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen opened by quoting Charles Dickens line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” This was used by the novelist to describe Europe at the time of the French Revolution; she was applying it to the state of the EU today.
She went on to explain it by saying “the state of our Union is the strongest it has ever been” but added immediately that “the state of our Union can also feel as precarious as it has ever been". Few observers of EU affairs would disagree with these sentiments.
The speech lasted for an hour and a quarter and addressed a wide range of issues impacting on society in Europe and beyond. The headline-grabbing announcement was about the opening of discussions with Canada, whose Prime Minister Mark Carney was in the audience, on becoming an associate member of the EU.
Strategic issues
This annual speech delivered by the Commission President reflects the strategic thinking of the EU on how to address the issues of the day. Unsurprisingly, given the ongoing global conflicts, energy and defence were recurring themes. So too was climate, with the summer heatwave and drought across much of Europe reflected on in the address. She highlighted that the EU now has trade deals in place with 80 countries worldwide and acknowledged that the EU needed to move faster to remain competitive.
Passing reference to farmers
Irish farmers could have no issue with any of these points. It is also fair to say that the State of the Union address was hardly mentioned in the multiple debates that took place around the Irish Farmers Journal stand at the Ploughing on Wednesday. What was striking about the comprehensive address given by the Commission president was that the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) didn’t receive a single mention. In fact there was only two brief references to farmers, one in the context of “farmers have risen to the challenge of this never-ending summer”, followed in the next paragraph by the comment that “Europe's farmers are the best in the world, and we will support them every step of the way”.
There was no mention of how exactly this support would be delivered beyond publishing a European Heatwave Plan to address climate-driven water and food-security risks.
Comment
While there was plenty of discussion about the Irish and EU budget as well as the CAP around the Ploughing Championships over the past three days, the reality is that agriculture and the CAP didn’t really feature at all in the strategic priorities outlined by the Commission president in Strasbourg on Wednesday.
The bottom line for Irish and EU farmers is that agriculture comes behind other priorities for the EU at present. While few would disagree with the issues raised by the president in her address that need attention, farmers might have hoped for more than a heatwave plan and reference to the heat and drought experienced by many across Europe which led to the loss of crops through wildfires.
SHARING OPTIONS