| Glyphosate re-approval The Commission’s long-awaited decision on the renewed approval of glyphosate came out with a bang this week: On Tuesday, it proposed to renew the approval of the most widely used herbicide in the EU for another ten years. The proposal is “based on scientific, solid information considering different active substances involved”, a Commission spokesperson stressed – pre-empting critics’ arguments who say data gaps mean certain risks linked to glyphosate cannot be ruled out. At the same time, the EU executive proposes that countries should take certain precautionary measures. Now, it is up to EU member states to either block or wave through the proposal during the October meeting of the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (PAFF committee). However, the hurdle for blocking the draft is high: A qualified majority of states would have to actively vote against it. Still, opposition to the re-approval is forming among member states: German agriculture minister Cem Özdemir told Euractiv he stands firmly against allowing glyphosate and is lobbying other countries, too. However, the liberals in government came out in favour of approval – if the coalition parties disagree on how to vote, the custom is that Berlin abstains. Meanwhile, according to French MEP Pascal Canfin – who’s a member of Macron’s party – his country will also not vote in favour of the Commission proposal. Ukraine’s grain imports The main news this week has been the rising tensions between the EU’s east, the Commission and Ukraine over imports of Ukrainian agricultural products. After the Commission finally took the decision at the eleventh hour not to extend its temporary ban on select Ukrainian agri imports, certain EU borderline countries – Poland, Hungary and Slovakia – decided to take matters into their own hands and impose a ban on their own, making good on their previous threats. The move is likely in breach of EU law, given that trade is an exclusive competence of the EU. Ukraine promptly fired back, filing a complaint to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the reactions to which have been varied. Poland, which faces elections in the upcoming weeks, was dismissive, with its agriculture minister telling EURACTIV in an exclusive interview that he does not fear repercussions either from the EU or the WTO. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki then decided to stop supplying Ukraine with weapons in its war against Russia in reaction to escalating tensions between the two countries over grain imports. Slovakia, on the other hand – whose farmers incidentally recorded their highest-ever profit in 2022 amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – has since managed to negotiate a grain trading system based on issuing and monitoring licences with Ukraine, meaning that the war-torn country has since dropped the charges against them. This has left the European Commission in a sticky situation – on the one hand, it is weighing up opening an infringement procedure against the EU countries that imposed the unilateral bans, but it also finds itself defending the same countries sued by Ukraine at the WTO on the other. Strategic dialogue enthusiasm This week’s agriculture ministers’ meeting was also the first one after Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech, in which she proposed a “strategic dialogue” on the future of agriculture. The advance was widely welcomed as an overdue step by ministers, some of which showed staggering enthusiasm. “Yay!”, Italy’s Francesco Lollobrigida exclaimed, voicing the hope this could lead to more “pragmatism” around agricultural policy. His Irish, Spanish, and French colleagues also hailed the initiative. And Germany’s Cem Özdemir gave praise, too, although it was delivered with a side blow mixed in. “Maybe it would have been good if the Commission had come up with this idea earlier, this way some of the technical mistakes in the Sustainable Use Regulation […] could have been avoided,” he quipped. Meanwhile, asked about what exactly this strategic dialogue means for the future of the agriculture sector at an event on Thursday (21 September), DG AGRI’s Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle gave a few more details about this new phase, confirming that it would kick off before the end of this year. | 
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