Giansanti: 'On US tariffs the EU's strength has not been fully explored'
The president of Confagricoltura against the Single Fund for the CAP: 'Maybe the problem in Brussels was not Timmermans'
3' min read
3' min read
US tariffs to be closed by 9 July, the new CAP due on the 16th, wars, even the review of the EU-Ukraine trade liberalisation agreement. "The assembly was imagined in times of peace and tranquillity, and instead it risks being upset by so many issues," says Confagricoltura president Massimiliano Giansanti. Next Tuesday, Milan's Bocconi University will host the association's summer assembly, which was originally supposed to focus on the future of agriculture: 'We wanted to have a higher level reflection on the enhancement of human capital in agriculture, on professionalisation, on the need for technological training both for ourselves and for our collaborators'. Instead, current events hold sway. And the rumours, as Giansanti defines them, end up taking the upper hand.
Let's start with US tariffs: do you agree with the 10% compromise hypothesis?
I am not happy about anything. The EU is strong and has all the tools to assert its rights. Between the US and the EU, it is not Europe that has to pay a 10% tariffs: we, for example, make great use of American technology and we should not always accept that we are the only ones with tariffs. The EU is a great economic and political power. I believe that the strength of the EU has not yet been fully explored.
And the Single Fund for Agriculture, due to be presented by the EU Commission on 16 July: do you like it?
The rumours tell us that there will be less money for agriculture than there is now, that there will be a reduction by having to fund both the rearmament for border defence and the Recovery plan. We had asked for at least inflation recovery, it seems there is not even that. We will oppose it, we will protest. Copa has worked well by compacting the European farmers' front, we have found strong partners in the EU Council and in the Europarliament, twenty European agriculture ministers oppose the single fund. In an imperfect world of wars and savage, as well as unfair, competition, Europe repeats a refrain that we thought had been abandoned with the new Commission: EU policy does not aim at productivity and competitiveness but at a redistributive and meritless logic of resources, and does not increase investment in food security. On the contrary, agricultural resources will be used to fuel weapons. Perhaps we will discover that the problem was not Timmermans, but someone else.
