The EU stumbles in its approach to industrial agriculture

The European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy indicated the ambition of the European Commission to overhaul EU farming policy and make it more sustainable. The Green Deal proposed that 40% of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should “contribute to climate action.” (my blog of 5 May).

The European Council conclusions of 13 July stated that industrial agriculture “increases the risk of future pandemics and need to be tackled” (my blog of 22 July).

Then, in the week beginning 19 October, the European Parliament undid much of the good achieved by the Commission and the Council. The Parliament rejected the proposal to ban the term “veggie burger”; BUT approved a ban on applying dairy terms (e.g. creamy, yogurt-style and cheese substitute) to plant-based products; AND voted against limiting agricultural subsidies to intensive factory farms e.g. by not providing support to concentrated animal feeding operations.

This demonstrated a total lack of ambition to use EU farm subsidies to achieve significant improvements for animals and the environment; and above all wasted (indeed spurned) a valuable opportunity to achieve comprehensive and radical reform of the CAP in the wake of the Green Deal. The Council were reduced to issuing a statement that the Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy were simply “recommendations”: thus failing to support the Commission at a crucial time.

The UK and Multi-Level Financial Regulation: From Post-Crisis Reform to ...

The UK and Multi-Level Financial Regulation. Post-Crisis Reform to Brexit

This blog reports on a webinar on 19 October, 2021, in which the panel discussed a new book entitled 'The UK and Multi-Level Financial Regulation. Post-Crisis Reform to Brexit'. The panel included authors Scott James (King’s College, London) and Lucia Quaglia (University of Bologna) and was chaired by Daniel Hardy, EuPEP, Oxford. The discussants were Alexander Lehmann (Breugel) and Sam Lowe (Centre for European Reform). 

In their book Scott James (King’s College, London) and Lucia Quaglia (University of Bologna) look at the UK’s stance on and involvement in various international and EU initiatives to strengthen resilience in the financial system since the global financial crisis (GFC). They seek to explain why the UK took different approaches in different policy areas as a product of political forces within the UK, and of the situation in the relevant international and EU fora facing the UK. Contrary to the pre-GFC perception that the UK has always been on the side of lax regulation, and has foot-dragged on international and EU initiatives to strengthen regulation, the authors find a complex picture.

The authors select five important regulatory areas, related to: the level of bank capital; bank resolution; bank structure; hedge fund regulation; and derivatives markets, in particular the role of centralized credit counterparties (CCPs). Each of these has been subject to international and/or EU initiatives since the GFC—the Basel 3 agreement on bank capital, for instance, and the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB’s) “Key Attributes on bank resolution”. James and Quaglia divide the UK’s position on each issue into “pace setting”, “foot dragging”, and “sitting on the fence”. While the UK’s attitude to some of these initiatives, for example the regulation of hedge funds, can be characterized as foot dragging, the UK was pace setting on other issues, such as bank capital requirements.