The governments of some EU Member States have recently introduced taxes on specific food categories and food ingredients such as sugar, fat, artificial sweeteners, soft drinks, fast food and pastry. These governments have so far justified these measures as an ‘effective’ way to address the societal challenge of increasing rates in obesity and other diet- and lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases. However, scientific evidence proving that taxation represents an effective means of changing consumer behaviour and of successfully tackling obesity and other non-communicable disease is yet inconclusive.

On 17 October 2012, the European Commission presented a proposal which will amend the Renewable Energy Directive and the Fuel Quality Directive. The proposal is complemented by an impact assessment and contains measures which will start the transition to biofuels that deliver substantial GHG savings, taking into account estimated indirect land use emissions.

Food and drink companies use commodity derivatives for price discovery and hedging purposes against price risk of the underlying physical agricultural raw material. Derivatives and OTC markets enable food industries to manage their exposure to volatility in agricultural commodity markets in order to achieve business predictability. This is of particular importance considering that CAP reforms have introduced more market orientation in the agricultural sector.

FoodDrinkEurope requests that the CAP measures more explicitly address the need for productivity and production growth in both pillars, while protecting EU productive potential and safeguarding natural resources, such as soil and water.