The European Commission outlined its strategic vision for the agriculture and food sector yesterday (19 February), a vision that ProVeg International has described as offering ‘little more than a rehash of the status quo’.

The initiative, presented by new EU commissioner Christophe Hansen, sets out plans aiming to ensure sustainability, competitiveness and resilience for the EU’s food and agriculture sector by 2040.

It addresses key challenges and opportunities within the sector, including environmental practices like regenerative agriculture and food waste reduction. It also highlights the need for the agri-food sector to boost its resilience against geopolitical tensions and reduce dependencies on imports for critical inputs such as fertilisers and animal feed, as well as ensuring fair conditions for the industry’s workforce.

In response to the new vision, plant-based industry awareness organisation ProVeg International shared a news release expressing disappointment, stating that the vision ‘misses the mark’ on driving real change in the EU’s food system and ‘lacks concrete steps and a clear plan for meaningful progress’.

ProVeg highlighted that the vision was expected to incorporate insights from the European Commission’s Strategic Dialog on the Future of Agriculture, which called for a deep transformation of the EU’s food and farming sectors – but did not, offering ‘only tentative steps rather than decisive action’.

It does not mention the growing role of plant-based foods acknowledged in the Strategic Dialog report, ProVeg pointed out, adding that the vision falls short of providing specific strategies for promoting plant-based proteins, pulses, legumes or diversifying protein sources.

Lucia Hortelano, senior EU policy manager at ProVeg International, commented: “While the vision contains some positive elements, like the revision of public procurement rules and the need for further innovation, it ultimately tries to please everyone and fails to push for the bold reforms needed to create fairer and more sustainable food supply chains in the EU”.

She added: “It is a missed opportunity to seize the broad consensus around the Strategic dialog recommendations – and we feel it fails to achieve the depolarisation goal which was at the core of this initiative”.

ProVeg is one of 130 organisations that have signed a letter directed at the European Commission calling for an EU-wide Action Plan for Plant-Based Foods to be developed by 2026, taking inspiration from Denmark’s plan.