Our priorities

Our Group will continue to advocate for the protection of one of our most strategic sectors - agriculture. The viability and competitiveness of the European agri-food sector is of utmost importance but the administrative burdens and environmental requirements for farmers who receive EU subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget have been putting our farmers under too much strain. 

We need a simplified CAP that empowers our farmers and rewards them for their efforts. Innovation will be key to enable European agriculture to transition to a more sustainable, economically viable form of farming that ensures food affordability and security.

We must safeguard the competitiveness of our farmers and ensure fair trade that guarantees reciprocity or mirror clauses when it comes to production standards. Europe's farmers are overburdened with rising production costs and environmental obligations.

The ECR Group reiterates the importance of generation renewal in the agricultural sector, which is often seen as an undesirable profession. The establishment of young people in rural areas with access to services and leisure and employment opportunities is key to preserving agriculture across the EU and thereby contributing to our food sovereignty.

We remain opposed to any food standardisation, imitation of our top-quality products, and any misleading labelling systems, such as the Nutri-Score system, which would damage our culinary heritage. We recognise the need for sustainable agriculture policy but one that is also compatible with production activities and maintaining the sector as a strategic asset.

Local and regional authorities are at the frontline of disaster risk management. We will therefore continue our efforts in the field of ensuring we build resilient communities so that we are better prepared for disasters and crises at all levels. Disasters know no borders and an essential building block is local-level resilience.

Tourism is another strategic sector we will prioritise in this mandate. Our Group will call for tourism policies that can reconcile market needs with sustainability policies whilst most importantly responding to the phenomenon of over tourism.