Animal Welfare, Pesticides and GMOs are given to Oliver Varhei from Hungary, whose portfolio is Animal Health and Welfare
Christoph Hansenthe chosen one of Ursula von der Leyen European Commissioner by agriculture and food, embodies her plan to make peace with restive farmers plagued by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and a changing climate.
The centre-right politician from Luxembourg not only belongs to the self-proclaimed agricultural party – the European People’s Party – which won the European elections in June. He also comes from a farming family, and his cousin Martin Hansen is Luxembourg’s agriculture minister, Politico reports.
At 42, Hansen, if approved by the European Parliament, would be the second youngest member of von der Leyen’s second college of commissioners.
Hansen has been described as a “political animal” by one environmentalist and a “respected politician outside his political family” by a think tank. Apart from politics, he is also a Led Zeppelin fan and cycling enthusiast.
“His parents had a farm and he was the youngest boy in the family,” said Charles Welbs, a young farmer from Luxembourg. “So yeah, if the brother hadn’t taken the farm, maybe he would have been the farmer instead.”
Maybe at some point he’ll wish it were.
There are just under 2,000 farms in Luxembourg, producing mainly milk, meat, wine and cereals. Unlike outgoing agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski’s home country of Poland, farmers in Luxembourg have remained calm during this year’s wave of protests against unfair prices, high costs and EU bureaucracy.
“Our sector and the Ministry of Agriculture had good talks during the protests, so we decided not to protest,” added the young farmer.
The cup of poison
The big question is how much of a voice Hansen will have in shaping policy — and how long his good reputation can last in office.
The Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, which he is supposed to lead, or DG Agriculture and Rural Development for short, was trimmed by von der Leyen during her first term. In launching her flagship Green Deal strategy, she essentially confined Wojciechowski to overseeing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the EU’s farming budget.
Hansen’s remit will cover food security, a key issue addressed in the strategic agriculture dialogue von der Leyen held this year, which she wants to turn into a 100-day action plan for agriculture. But food safety – which includes issues such as pesticides and genetically modified crops – will remain, along with animal welfare, the responsibility of Hungary’s health commissioner-designate Oliver Varhei.
“His main challenge is to avoid limiting his role as commissioner to the structural funds dimension of the CAP, but to have the necessary room for maneuver to oversee the various policies impacting the agricultural sector such as nutrition, trade and climate dimensions,” said Luc Vernet of the industry think tank Farm Europe.
Agriculture, however, is a “can of worms,” quipped Martin Hoisik, a liberal MEP from Slovakia who is vice-president of the European Parliament and sits on its environment committee. “You’d have to be very lucky to come out of it politically healthy.”
#agricultural #commissioner #Hansen #charge #Agro #Plovdiv
