The Portuguese Farmers’ Confederation (CAP) has high expectations of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s choice for the new agriculture commissioner, Christophe Hansen, and is confident that he will pay attention to the sector, the group said on Thursday.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has chosen Luxembourg’s Christophe Hansen as the new commissioner for agriculture and food, she announced on Tuesday.
“Expectations are high because the new Agriculture Commissioner is working with documents that have already been presented […] which are very different from those we had before,” said CAP President Álvaro Mendonça e Moura, who was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the fourth edition of the Iberian Agricultural and Forestry Congress (CIAF), taking place in Cáceres, Spain.
The Confederation pointed out that it had a relationship with the new Commissioner, who had been involved in preparing several European Youth Congresses.
In this context, Álvaro Mendonça e Moura stressed that he was “positively inclined” towards Christophe Hansen and that he was confident that the new European Commissioner for Agriculture would pay attention to the sector.
However, he noted that seeing what the European Commission would do on the ground would be necessary.
Pedro Barato Triguero, president of the Associación Agraria Jóvenes Agricultores (ASAJA), the Spanish counterpart to the CAP, stressed that the new commissioner should “make the potential of agriculture in Europe count so as not to depend on the Green Pact”.
Triguero hopes that Christophe Hansen will realise that Europe is a great agricultural power and will defend farmers and livestock breeders.
(Pedro Emídio – edited by Pedro Sousa Carvalho | Lusa.pt)
Source: euractiv.com
