Cem Özdemir actually stands for a greener agricultural policy than his predecessors in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. There has now been a rebuke from Brussels for a strategic plan of his house.
After clear criticism from the EU Commission, a multi-billion dollar German strategic plan for future agricultural subsidies is to become “greener”.
He sees this as an encouragement to make German agriculture more sustainable and resilient, said Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir on Tuesday in Brussels before a meeting with his EU counterparts. On Friday, his ministry published a letter from the commission criticizing “clear deficiencies” in the German plan.
With the strategic plan worth 30 billion euros, Germany wants to implement a reform of the common EU agricultural policy with which the production of food is to become more environmentally friendly. When Germany submitted the plan several weeks late in February, Özdemir was still confident that it would be approved.
Plan shaped by previous government?
The minister sees the reason why this did not work in the work of the previous government. When he took office in December, he had already found most of the plan and had implemented it quickly at the request of the farmers, he said on Tuesday. In addition, it also needed the approval of the federal states.
Özdemir now emphasized that the handwriting of the new government will be clearly noticeable in the next strategic plan. It is important to combine food safety with environmental protection. Natural laws are not interested in what the opposition in the German Bundestag thinks. “Any species that dies is gone, you can’t bring it back with a return decision, it’s just gone forever,” said Özdemir.
