European Parliament meets EXPO 2015

Dear Vice-President Mogherini,

Dear Ambassador Sannino,

Dear President Bracco,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Preparations for the EXPO Milan are in full swing. This exhibition is a good testimony of how advanced works are. I am glad that the European Parliament was chosen as one of the first places to present the projects of the European Union and its Member States. The EXPO is first and foremost an event intended to establish a dialogue with, and between, citizens.

The European Union will be present in Milan with its own pavilion, which is the result of a joint effort between all EU institutions. I am told that works are proceeding swiftly. And I am confident, looking at the project and theme of our pavilion, that it will be one of the main attractions of the EXPO Milan 2015.

I am looking forward to it, not just for the beauty and attractiveness of the projects but also for the theme and the debate it will raise. The theme “feeding the planet: energy for life” is a topical one. Food sustainability is a cross-cutting issue and one that touches upon the internal and external dimension of the action of the European Union. That is why I welcome the presence of Vice President-High Representative Federica Mogherini i here today.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

At the turn of the 18th century, a fierce debate gripped Europe. To this day, this debate is not exhausted. On one side, the optimists, like the Marquis de Condorcet, trusted human ingenuity and scientific development as the instruments to meet the challenge of population growth.

The most prominent representative of the pessimists was Robert Malthus, who with his Essay of the Principle of Population, forecasted looming disasters for humanity. He claimed that whilst population multiplies geometrically, the food supply increases arithmetically; and that therefore, the population will eventually outstrip the food supply.

Two centuries later, who was right? Condorcet or Malthus? None of them. We have succeeded, through technological advancement to increase yields, to increase food production to keep up with the growth in population. The food that is produced globally would feed today’s global population.

Yet, we have a major problem. Food distribution has gone horribly wrong. Today in the planet we have 805 million undernourished people and 1,5 billion people overweight or obese. On top of this 1,3 billion tons of food are wasted every year. We are witnessing an imbalance of huge proportions in the global food chain.

2015 can be a year of reckoning when it comes to feeding the planet and the Milan EXPO can serve as leverage in this respect. In September 2015, world leaders will hold a high-level summit to adopt a new set of Goals building on the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals. At the end of November 2015 delegations will gather in Paris for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. 2015 will also be the European Year for Development. The European Union and its Member States must use this opportunity for Europe to re-establish its leadership in the advancement of multilateralism and to become the champion and example of sustainability. For this to succeed we need to act boldly both on the internal and external front.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Internally, the European Union, and especially the European Parliament have not been sitting on their hands. In our legislative action, we have aimed at pursuing five principles: informing, protecting, researching, reducing waste and opening-up to the world.

We have helped European consumers to make more informed and healthy choices about their diet thanks to food labelling legislation passed in 2010. The new rules ensure that consumers have easy access to key information about nutritional values, about country of origin and expiry dates.

The European Parliament is and has always been vigilant with regard to threats to consumer health or with food products or claims misleading consumers. The Parliament reacted strongly to the different food and animal feed crises, such as the BSE outbreak, the dioxin affair, food and mouth disease and the more recent horse meat scandal. The European Parliament will do everything within its power to guarantee a high level of food safety at all stages of the production and distribution process for all food products marketed within the EU, whether produced within the EU or imported from third countries.

We have helped to ensure that the quality and identity of our foods is protected, certified and recognisable. I hear in some quarters that our certificates, labels of origin, tradition and geographic provenance are criticised as a subtle form of protectionism. I could not disagree more. They are a success story. They are certificates of Europe’s qualities, values and traditions. And we will stand ready to defend them.

We need innovative solutions to meet the double challenge of increasing scarcity and growing demand. Today’s farmers are new Renaissance men: they must possess the right mix of science, economics, entrepreneurialism, and environmental awareness to meet the challenges of the future. The European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy must help them to advance in exactly this direction.

Europe needs to show its capability to foster a change of culture in the consumption of food. According to Commission estimates the annual food waste generation in the 28 Member States is over 100 million tonnes, or 179 kilograms per capita. This requires a leap change in our education and habits. The European Parliament set out its position on this in a resolution in January 2012 on how to avoid food waste. This year the Commission came with a proposal to amend the Waste Framework Directive, aiming at the development of a comprehensive strategy to combat unnecessary food waste.

The sustainability of our food chain in Europe does not mean closing out to the world as some suggest. An open Europe is a Europe that helps lifting millions of people out of poverty. It is one that is advantageous to consumers and helps the competitiveness of our farmers.

Yet, food is not just another additional tradable commodity like any other. Investments in agriculture to increase yields and profitability are welcome. Rampant speculation which can have devastating consequences on the lives of millions, is not. This leads me to the external dimension of the action of the Union.

To successfully lead action against hunger we need to understand the complexity of the phenomenon, its origins and its consequences. That is why I have been a supporter of the cluster structure of the new European Commission and that is why I am glad that Federica Mogherini will be leading the Team “Europe in the World” to coordinate issues ranging from Trade, International Cooperation and Development, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, European neighbourhood and enlargement.

The European Union and its Member States are the biggest donors of development aid in the world. We often repeat this. But this fact is not in itself a reason to be complacent. Without coordination our impact and effectiveness are reduced. We need to improve our capacity to prevent, assess and respond to crisis: including famines and droughts.

We also need to help fostering home grown debates on food policy in third countries. This is the path to success. I think for example at the inclusion of the right to food in constitutions and legal systems; at the protection of land and food commodities from speculation and land-grabbing. The best actions to ensure access and sustainability to food and water will always be local ones. Food and water are one of the biggest sources of conflict in today’s world. Let’s make sure that this will not be the case in tomorrow’s world.

I look forward to the EXPO 2015 in Milan. I am sure it will be an opportunity to showcase Italian and European excellence, but it will also be an opportunity to learn, debate and push the world into action. Let’s use this opportunity.

Thank you for your attention