Copa Cogeca Documents Reveal Pesticide Reform Killing
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- Copa Cogeca documents show the lobby delayed, gutted, and overturned sweeping EU farming reforms, including a 2020 plan to cut pesticide use by half; the group's then-secretary-general Pekka Pesonen told members it would defend controversial products like foie gras and fur 'in the same way as tobacco.'
- The pesticide regulation was withdrawn in February 2024 after Copa Cogeca's September 2022 internal note urged members to 'delay until then' and force the Commission to abandon its objectives — exactly the timeline the lobby had targeted.
- Copa Cogeca pressured permanent representations to support glyphosate's license renewal — a chemical the WHO's cancer body has classified as probably carcinogenic — and lobbied to protect bee-harming pesticides.
- Copa Cogeca got the threshold for what counts as an industrial farm raised by 50% before the proposal was even released, a change analysis found costs the public €1.8bn (£1.5bn) a year in lost health benefits.
- The final Industrial Emissions Directive significantly raised thresholds for poultry and pig farms and excluded cattle entirely — leaving only about 1% of Europe's cattle farms covered by the original proposal.
- Copa Cogeca privately stated at a 2021 internal meeting that the industry could ditch caged farming immediately if financially supported, yet its lobbying position demanded a transition period of up to 15 years.
- Copa Cogeca succeeded in stripping wolves' protected status from EU nature law — a goal its own officials privately called 'probably naive' — with the habitats directive amended in June 2025 and a new target list of animals drawn up immediately after.
Why it matters: The lobbying cost the public €1.8bn a year in lost health benefits from weakened factory-farm rules alone, while Copa Cogeca's own officials privately conceded cages could end immediately with financial support — directly contradicting the 15-year transition the lobby publicly demanded. The pattern: a group claiming to represent 22 million farmers consistently chose to shield highly industrialised operators responsible for disproportionate pollution, according to Greenpeace EU.
