Many farmers and other actors in the food chain are willing to invest to modernise and improve the competitiveness, circularity, and sustainability of their farms or plants. However, this momentum to move forward is considerably slowed down or even stopped due to over restrictive and burdensome EU legislations such as the Water Framework Directive, the Birds and Habitat Directives or the Nitrates Directives. Considering that the Commission has explicitly put “simplifying for sustainable competitiveness” at the centre of its political agenda for 2024 2029 and has announced “stress‑tests” of several environmental legislations for 2026, it is timely to assess with people on the ground what are the changes required to ensure a more competitive and sustainable sector.
Bringing together policymakers, legal experts and farmers, we will look into the legislative barriers limiting legal certainty, financing and planning to ensure that “simplification” does not remain a purely rhetorical exercise but genuinely reduces administrative burden and enables sustainable farming and rural investments.
Venue
European Committee of the Regions (CoR)
Conference room VMA 21
2nd floor of VMA Building
Rue Van Maerlant 2, B-1040, Brussels
The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) is hosting the event but is not responsible for its content.