At the occasion of the ELDR congress in Stockholm last weekend, the LYMEC bureau had a breakfast meeting with EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development,
Mariann Fischer Boel (Venstre, Denmark) for an exchange of views on the LYMEC campaign
‘CAP is CRAP: EU budget needs new priorities’.
Even though the Commissioner saw the LYMEC campaign as very radical, she acknowledged the fact that youth organisations have to be more radical than their mother parties in order to influence them in a certain direction and she thus encouraged LYMEC to pursue in this direction. She also agreed on the need to continue the reform of the CAP and exchanged views with LYMEC about long-term visions for the CAP.
Among the topics of discussion was also about Genetically Modified (GMO) Food and the influence that different authorisation and labelling practices have for the competitiveness of European farmers vis-ŕ-vis the rest of the world.
Commissioner Fischer Boel stressed the need to strengthen the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in order to speed up the authorisation process of GMO food in Europe while at the same time maintaining the highest possible safety standards. Later during the congress, Mariann Fischer Boel compared the CAP with an oil tanker and said that even if a change of policy cannot be swift, liberals should be determined to turn it into a new course.
