As the dust starts to settle after new EU farming rules were proposed, Adrian Bebb, food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, looks ahead at their likely impact
A deal struck today on the EU's energy efficiency target for 2030, after a year and a half of negotiations, will let down the climate and Europe's energy-poor, according to Friends of the Earth Europe.
Representatives of EU Governments, the European Parliament and European Commission agreed today to:
But citizens will surpass bleak expectations of new target.
EU decision makers have concluded an inadequate deal to govern Europe’s future renewable energy to 2030, according to Friends of the Earth Europe. However, citizens and communities have won new rights to generate renewable energy that could prove transformative.
The EU Council, Parliament and Climate Commissioner Cañete concluded a year and a half of negotiations on new EU renewable energy rules that include:
The European Commission has today been urged to ensure the safety of one of Eastern Europe’s richest wildlife sites.
Kresna Gorge in Bulgaria – a fragile valley of outstanding importance, with twice the butterfly species of the UK – is threatened by a Bulgarian government decision to build an EU-funded motorway through it. Construction could start soon if the Commission doesn’t act.
The European Commission today set out spending plans that could further lock Europe into a fossil fuel future well into the next decade, in proposals to extend the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
While the EU Commission has reduced the space for gas projects in their new proposals for the future EU budget 2020-2027; it has left loopholes for the EU to continue spending taxpayers’ money on fossil fuel infrastructure, including gas.
Reacting to Bayer's decision to drop the Monsanto name as part of its near-complete takeover of the agribusiness giant, Adrian Bebb, food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe said:
"Bayer will become Monsanto in all but name unless it takes drastic measures to distance itself from the US chemical giant's controversial past. If it continues to peddle dangerous pesticides and unwanted GMOs then it will quickly find itself dealing with the same global resistance that Monsanto did."
Today, Nigerian and international civil society organisations repeated their call for the immediate start of the long overdue clean-up of oil pollution in Ogoniland in Nigeria's Niger Delta. This should be undertaken in line with recommendations made by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in its landmark 2011 study of the region.
New podcast
In this latest episode of our 'Real World Radio Europe' podcast, we follow the remarkable progress of the fossil free campaign in Ireland.
The European Commission has taken a leap forward in tackling plastic pollution, with new laws to reduce throwaway single-use plastics.
The proposal, which is designed to prevent and reduce the impact of certain plastic products on the environment, and in particular the marine environment, sets a number of different policy measures to tackle these problematic single-use products, from bans and reduction efforts, to labelling and extended producer responsibility schemes.
The food and farming system in the EU is the result of different policies coming together over many decades. I now includes policies and laws connected to agriculture, food production, trade, food safety, seeds, environment, climate, nature protection, health, rural development, workers' rights and many more.