It was a pleasure to open a constructive dialogue with Ukrainian farmers organisations Ukrainian Agribusiness Club Association (UCAB) and Ukrainian Agri Council today taking part in the event "Ukrainian Agriculture in the EU, the view from Kyiv". This event was an opportunity for Farm Europe to share our views on this major on-going geopolitical development.
"We have today two elephants in the room of the Common Agricultural Policy and next Multi-annual Financial Framework negotiations : the EU-Ukraine enlargement which is not discussed enough, as well as the concrete ambition and plan of the European Union for its own agriculture, which cannot be the addition of 27 or tomorrow 28 different strategies", underlined Luc Vernet, Secretary General of Farm Europe.
He added : "The process of preparing Ukraine's accession to the EU requires more than posturing, especially when it comes to agriculture. It cannot be a technocratic process and administrative procedures only. It requires political oversight and strategic thinking based on robust analysis".
The European Union needs first and foremost to recover the competitiveness lost over the past decades in order to make it possible to produce across all territories, and not only the most productive ones. This is the way to be "United in Diversity", in particular when it comes to such a strategic sector : the EU needs to provide the capacity to the all Member States to make the best out of their agronomic potential, not levers for internal confrontation and fragmentation.
The EU should therefore define a clear investment strategy, start combining environmental and economic performance instead of opposing the two, create new internal demand opportunities and last but not least define a true ambition on export markets with competitive standards for all.
This will be the first step to build a promising common future.
Thank you
@AlexLissitsa &
@AndriiDykun for the invitation, to Nazar Bobitski for the good cooperation ahead of this event, as well as to John Thomassen
@JohnDeereBE for his forward looking contribution to our panel discussion.