site.btaGreen Deal Implementation "Significantly Delayed", Says Head of Agriculture Unit in Bulgaria's Representation in Brussels

The Green Deal is becoming a hot topic before the European Parliament Election, but its implementation has been delayed significantly, said Snezhana Blagoeva, Head of Agriculture and Fishery sector in the Bulgarian Permanent Representation in Brussels. She was among the speakers at the Tenth National Meeting of Farmers in Kazanlak on Thursday. The meeting was organized by the Bulgarian Association of Agricultural Producers.

Blagoeva said that the implementation of the Green Deal will depend on the results of the European elections, how many seats the Greens will win and who will be nominated as Commissioner for Agriculture in the new European Commission. According to her, the Green Deal is becoming a hot topic this summer, as Ursula von der Leyen became European Commission President in 2019 precisely because of the Green Deal, promising that serious goals would be achieved and economic development in the community would be somewhat decoupled from the planet's resources.

Blagoeva added that the European Union is truly considered a leader in green transition, but other major countries are also beginning to turn in that direction, including China.

Dwelling on climate neutrality legislation that is most important to farmers, Blagoeva specified that one of the main acts is the Regulation on land, land use change and forestry, with which the European Commission raised the target for reducing carbon emissions until 2030. Another Act is about regulating industrial emissions, where Blagoeva said that the European Commission also started with significantly high targets, but little by little they started to change, as some Member States were against the regulation, including Bulgaria. She added that the success of these regulations will depend on the extent the European Parliament's Committee on Environment will start listening to the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture in the future.

Blagoeva also noted that the draft regulation on pesticides was withdrawn by the European Commission, as no consensus was found in the EU for its implementation. "Coherence could not be achieved. The regulation did not pass in the European Parliament due to low environmental ambition, not because of high targets," she said, adding that Member States were divided into two groups in the Council of the EU, because different national conditions were not taken into account. Blagoeva gave the example of the risk of diseases and pests, which is higher in some Member States and therefore regulation cannot be applied uniformly to reduce the use of pesticides. "For now, we are at point zero, but the pesticide regulation remains a European priority", she noted.

According to her, we are seeing a softening of the targets of the Green Deal because Member States started to put up a stronger resistance against the targets, which influenced the reaction of the agricultural community and the protests in the Member States. As a result, Blagoeva pointed out, the European Commission has decided to reduce the environmental ambition and listen to the farmers who showed that they have serious problems with the administrative burden and the uncompetitive situation in national markets.