Dear Member of the European Parliament,
The Commission’s attack on the environmental conditionality of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is outrageous and unacceptable. The Commission is fast-tracking decisions based on election fever, promoting a hatchet job trick by the European People’s Party (EPP). The EPP is forcing a last-minute, no-negotiation opening up of a law for which they themselves were responsible for negotiating. The actions show a scandalous disregard for democracy and due democratic process, citizens, science and farmers. At the same time, the actions are a departure from predictable, consistent, and coherent policy-making: deleting ecological elements of the CAP, now proposed at lightning speed, is diametrically opposed to the goals of the Farm to Fork Strategy. The Commission presented the Farm to Fork strategy shortly after taking office as a central element of its Green Deal, to address the climate and biodiversity crisis. This departure from reliable decision-making poses a fundamental problem for the credibility of EU policy making overall. Citizens rightly expect political decision-makers to make scientifically based and reliable decisions in the public interest. Therefore, we urgently ask you to take your responsibility and reject the Commission’s proposal. Public funds should be steered to nature- and climate-friendly practices with clear added societal value, and should be linked to ambitious result indicators, targets and timelines.