Agriculture minister at EU meeting to address climate goals

Agriculture Minister Costas Kadis is in Strasbourg to attend the informal meeting of his EU counterparts which will on Monday and Tuesday focus on the goal of climate neutrality by 2050.

Ministers will jointly discuss new developments in the agricultural sector, with the European Commissioner for Agriculture, the President of the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee and representatives of European associations.

The EU is targetting achieving climate neutrality by 2050 to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Carbon neutrality is defined as the capacity to offset as much carbon as we emit, while taking account of all the greenhouse gases that are responsible for climate change.

Two levers of action will make this possible: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing the number of carbon sinks to offset unavoidable emissions.

With this goal, in July 2021 the European Commission published the ‘Fit for 55’ legislative proposal, which raises the EU’s ambitions with the objective to reduce net carbon emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030 in comparison to 1990.

This legislative proposal assigns the agriculture and forestry sectors ambitious goals for reducing their emissions, while recognising their unique role in land-based activities due to the carbon storage properties of soil and biomass.

The aim of the meeting is to make shared progress on these matters to ensure the future European framework meets the challenges facing the forestry and agriculture sectors to fully participate in mitigating climate change.

It will be an opportunity for the Member States to share their experience and for Minister of Agriculture and Food Julien Denormandie to present the concrete initiatives already in place in France, such as the low-carbon label, which allows farmers to commit to lowering emissions on their farms over five years for market-based compensation.