Teresa Jordà: “There will be no European strategic autonomy without food sovereignty”
Despite the votes against by the People’s Party, hard right Vox and Navarre regionalists UPN, the Spanish Congress approved on Thursday a motion arising from an address by Esquerra Republicana defending a stronger Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and rejecting the European Commission’s proposed cuts to the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF). The ERC motion urges the Spanish government to oppose these cutbacks and guarantee the participation of the regions in the management of both policies.
“We are not just talking about a European budget today. We are talking about a way of seeing Europe and the people who put food on our tables every day,” said Esquerra’s deputy spokesperson Teresa Jordà, pointing out that “food sovereignty is an indispensable condition for European strategic autonomy.”
Ms Jordà warned that the cuts planned by the European Commission “are not a minor issue,” and would lead to the disappearance of farm holdings, a threat to territorial cohesion, fewer opportunities for young people, loss of economic activity in villages, and a direct blow to the future of fisheries.
In this regard, Esquerra’s motion calls on the Spanish government to take an ambitious stand in the imminent negotiations on the European Union’s 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework, preserving both the CAP and the FEMPA European Union policies with sufficient funding, decentralized, and with their own regulatory frameworks.
It also calls for a more ambitious Community budget, equivalent to 2% of the EU’s Gross Domestic Product, funded by its own new contributions, and demands that the State guarantee a CAP budget that at least maintains the current level of funding in constant terms.
Likewise, the text approved rejects the European Commission’s proposed 30% co-funding for the CAP market measures, as well as any attempt to recentralize the management of European funds, defending the principle of subsidiarity and the participation of territorial governments in the implementation of these policies.
Regarding fisheries, the motion urges the Government to oppose the proposed 66% cut to the EMFAF, and to preserve the Participatory Local Development model through the Fisheries Local Action Groups, which are fundamental for participatory governance and the development of the blue economy in the Mediterranean.
Ms Jordà stressed that “Catalan farmers and the Catalan fisheries sector are not asking for privileges, they are asking to be able to continue existing, to compete on equal terms and to have a future,” and called for a Europe that “protects its people, its territories and its ability to feed itself.” “Defending agriculture, livestock farming and fishing is not looking to the past. It is, in point of fact, defending the future,” she concluded.