Europe has already paid a very high price for its strategic dependencies. We cannot make the same mistake with food.

This was the central message delivered today by the President of Eat Europe, Luigi Scordamaglia, at the European Parliament, at an event organised by MEP Fidanza (ECR), rapporteur in the EP committee for agriculture on the European Competitivness Fund, attended by European Commissioner for Agriculture Christophe Hansen and Italy’s Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry Francesco Lollobrigida, and several MEPs.

Europe has already paid a very high price for strategic dependencies. First energy. Now automotive. We are paying the consequences of having weakened our own productive capacity. We cannot make the same mistake with food. Food security is strategic security. Europe must be able to produce enough food, safely and competitively, according to the standards we demand from our own producers. The CAP and competitiveness are not alternatives. They are complementary. The CAP provides stability; the Competitiveness Fund must provide the investment needed to modernise production, strengthen the food chain and reduce strategic dependencies.

“We are not asking for protectionism or handouts. We are asking for the conditions to compete fairly,” said the President of Eat Europe, Luigi Scordamaglia.

And fair competition starts with reciprocity. We cannot impose increasingly demanding standards on European farmers and food companies while allowing imports produced under lower standards to compete freely in our market. The same rules must apply to those who want access to the European market.

The Competitiveness Fund must invest across the entire food chain: innovation, digitalisation, water and irrigation, energy, storage, bioenergy and the bioeconomy. And we need a real circular economy. Digestate is a concrete example. Properly managed and valorised, it can reduce Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers and lower their cost, turning a resource into a strategic input for agriculture. But the design of the Fund will determine who actually benefits. We cannot create jobs for a few large operators with money that is supposed to strengthen the whole European economy.

Large companies can lead projects, but only when those investments generate real value for farmers, SMEs and the wider supply chain.

The Fund should support integrated projects bringing together farmers, SMEs and larger companies, including through value-chain contracts that strengthen long-term cooperation and coordination among actors across the chain, from primary production to processing, distribution and markets. Such an approach should ensure that investment is better aligned across the value chain and delivers measurable benefits for all participating actors, while strengthening value creation and resilience throughout the food system.

“The Competitiveness Fund cannot become simply another instrument for financing rearmament. Defence matters, but European security is also about food, water, energy and productive capacity. If we want European consumers to have safe and high-quality food tomorrow, we must ensure that European producers remain competitive today,” said Luigi Scordamaglia. “A Europe that cannot produce what it needs cannot claim genuine strategic autonomy.”

We have already opposed attempts, including by the rapporteur, to relegate agriculture to a separate silo, as if farmers could simply be confined to a specific policy box while Europe designs its competitiveness strategy. Agriculture is not a sector to be ghettoised. It is an integral part of Europe’s strategic autonomy, competitiveness and security.

We will therefore not accept attempts to push agriculture to the margins of the Competitiveness Fund — or proposals that would exclude it from strategic investment opportunities.

“Europe has already learned the cost of strategic dependency. Let us make sure that food is not the next one,” concluded Luigi Scordamaglia.