Unpacking the Commission’s new Vision for Agriculture and Food 

This week, the Commission revealed its Vision for Agriculture and Food, setting the direction of travel for the EU’s agri-food policy over the next five years and beyond. Being very much in line with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s political guidelines, it is hardly a surprise that the roadmap puts a strong focus on boosting competitiveness, reducing dependencies on critical imports and ensuring food security. With this shift, the Commission clearly moves away from the previous mandate’s environmentally ambitious Farm to Fork strategy and instead pivots to cutting back on green measures and targets. 

Here is our take on the key things standing out. 

Building on the current CAP national strategic plans, the European Commission aims to grant member states greater flexibility and responsibility in the next CAP reform, fostering a more dynamic and adaptable agricultural landscape. However, this increased leeway risks legitimising further renationalisation of the agriculture sector, potentially undermining the unity of the internal market. 

Through the lenses of EU competitiveness and strategic autonomy, the future CAP will focus on supporting farmers, now considered pivotal actors in ensuring food security and economic prosperity in rural areas.

By cutting red tape and simplifying the current environmental conditionality system, farmers will have greater flexibility to innovate and adapt their practices to local conditions. Yet, this does not guarantee that these practices will be more sustainable or contribute to regional environmental resilience. The promotion of green practices will largely depend on incentive measures, which will play a significant role in the next CAP reform, as the Commission “orient the future CAP away from conditions to incentives.”

Area-based direct payments, representing the largest share of CAP money and aimed at securing farmers income, will continue to play a “crucial role” in the next CAP, but with a stronger focus on supporting farmers’ contributions to food production and maintaining a competitive agricultural sector, while degressivity and capping will be used to channel funds towards those most in need. 

These two instruments have been established tools in past CAP reforms. Capping sets an upper limit on direct payments, while degressivity gradually reduces direct payments per hectare as farm size increases, meaning larger farms receive lower subsidies per hectare. While currently applied by member states on a voluntary base, these instruments could see broader adoption, with their inclusion in national strategic plans potentially becoming the norm rather than the exception.   

Trade is central to the Commission’s Vision for the future of agriculture and food, which combines a mix of offensive and defensive interests. On one hand, it seeks to promote EU agri-food exports and expand market access through instruments like free trade agreements; on the other, it addresses critical vulnerabilities by tackling dependencies on key imported inputs such as fertilisers, feed, and energy. This dual approach reflects the new Commission’s broader economic foreign policy, which integrates trade and economic security as interconnected priorities. 

In the final strategy, however, the Commission scaled back its original position – leaked in an earlier draft – which, for instance, proposed banning the production of prohibited pesticides for export. Instead, the Commission adopted a compromise, committing to an impact assessment in 2025 to evaluate the effects on “the EU competitive position and the international implications” and to “assess the issue of the export of hazardous chemicals, including pesticides, that are banned in the EU”. This cautious approach leaves a significant loophole in EU policy, notably as hazardous chemicals banned domestically can still be produced and exported to third countries. 

At the same time, this decision to water down commitments reflects the complexity of balancing competing interests: while some view such measures targeting imports as protectionist, others argue they are necessary to level the playing field for EU farmers and uphold high environmental, health, and safety standards. By pursuing a compromised approach, the Commission seeks to address concerns about WTO compatibility and the economic implications for both EU farmers and trading partners.
These tensions are evident throughout the text, which emphasises the need to step up the enforcement of food safety legislation, announcing the creation of a dedicated task force to strengthen import controls. Simultaneously, the Commission recognises the need to enhance cooperation with trading partners to ensure coherence between the EU’s internal and external policies on agriculture, environment, climate, and health – acknowledging (albeit indirectly) the potential impact of this new strategy on the EU’s trade relations.  

Ultimately, while trade policy can be a driver of more sustainable agri-food practices, it is not a silver bullet for all the challenges facing the EU. A more assertive trade policy must be complemented by effective internal policies to address structural domestic issues.  

In response to last year's farmer protests and growing polarisation, the Commission has also placed greater emphasis on fostering trust and dialogue “across the entire agri-food system, in the EU and globally”. As recommended by the conclusions of the Strategic Dialogue on EU agriculture, the newly established European Board on Agriculture and Food (EBAF) will play a central role in this effort, advising the Commission and facilitating stakeholder engagement to shape more inclusive and effective policies. 

With a strong focus on the production side and overall little attention given to the food aspect of the Vision for Agriculture and Food, the Commission nevertheless promises to convene a yearly “Food Dialogue”, including relevant food system’s actors, such as “consumers, primary producers, industry, retailers, public authorities and civil society.” Besides that, however, consumers and the need to promote healthy, sustainable and affordable diets are barely mentioned – a missed opportunity for the Commission to transform the agri-food system through a more holistic approach. 

While noting the importance of the agrifood sector in achieving the EU’s climate neutrality objective by 2050, the Commission proves less ambitious on concrete climate and environmental measures, emphasising that the “ecological transition must integrate economic and implementation challenges.”

To reduce administrative burdens, the Commission is planning to cut back on sustainability standards, certifications and reporting requirements which have created “high transaction costs” and “confusion” for farmers in the past and is instead suggesting to introduce a new on-farm sustainability assessment and benchmarking system, allowing farmers to monitor, record and benchmark their sustainability performance more easily – however, the so called “sustainability compass” remains voluntary.  

With a new proposal for a Water Resilience Strategy and a proposal “that accelerates the access to biopesticides” the Vision only briefly touches upon the need to protect nature and calls for better implementation and enforcement of existing regulation instead of new greening rules. In the context of promoting healthy soils, it recognises support for organic farming as essential but falls short of setting clear targets and measures to protect and maintain soils in the EU  even though the Commission acknowledges that “European soils are under strain from factors including climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and in some cases unsustainable soil management”. 

Last but not least, banning pesticides will most likely become more difficult, especially “if alternatives are not yet available” and unless they threaten human health or the environment.

The Vision unveiled today is not a revolution for the agri-food sector, nor was it intended to be. The true transformative potential, especially in light of changing geopolitical realities and new priorities of the EU, lies in the Commission’s proposal for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), expected in July. If rumours are true, the Commission is considering a radical overhaul of the MFF to merge various spending programmes into three single funds with pre-allocated envelopes for member states. This would give the bargaining power over the size of the CAP budget to national administrations which - without doubt – would be a revolution.