As 2024, the year of elections draws to a close, Ireland joins the US in waiting for a new government administration to be formed early in the new year.

European Parliament elections were also held in May and when the new parliament is in place, the Commission is also renewed.

That process was completed over the autumn and the new commissioners took up office at the beginning of December.

Irish farmers will look to the agriculture and trade commissioners as the ones who will have greatest impact on the business of farming for the remainder of this decade.

Christophe Hansen, who is from a farming background in Luxembourg, is the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, while Valdis Dombrovskis continues as European Commissioner for Trade, having succeeded Phil Hogan in 2020.

The initial impressions of Commissioner Hansen is that he understands agriculture and farming, but, ultimately, he will be judged on the next CAP, which is already in preparation, despite the current CAP only coming into effect in 2023.

All about the money

His big challenge will be securing an adequate budget to pay EU farmers for jumping through the regulatory hoops that only apply to EU farmers. The agriculture share has been falling steadily and there has been no increase in payments to reflect inflation in recent CAP reforms.

Demands on funding from defence are only likely to increase with the return of Donald Trump in the US and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is still very much a reminder of potential instability on the eastern borders of the EU.

In the elections to the European Parliament, the Greens were the big losers as was the case in the recent Irish general election.

There has been a corresponding increase in the number of members that have a more nationalistic outlook and the belief is that the agriculture voice may be somewhat stronger in this parliament than it was in the previous mandate.

The first big test will be whenever the Mercosur trade deal comes for a vote, as it will, assuming it secures the qualified majority from the heads of state in the Council of Ministers.

Australian trade deal waiting to be concluded

Aside from Mercosur, the Australian trade deal will come round again during this term.

A deal was almost concluded in the middle of 2023 only to fail at the last minute because the Australians didn’t consider they were getting a sufficient beef quota.

The Commission will be keeping a close eye on farmer reaction to the Mercosur deal when they are considering how much more they will open the door to the EU beef market with an Australian deal. One to watch in 2025.

USA

There will be two other big trade issues with global superpowers that don’t include trade deals - quite the opposite in fact.

Donald Trump has made no secret about adopting a strong tariff-based protectionist policy and there is a big chance that EU exports to the US will have tariff burdens attached. This would be particularly bad news for Irish dairy exports.

China

The second global issue is how to work with China. There is already an investigation by China on alleged EU companies dumping pigmeat.

This followed a decision by the EU to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles earlier in 2024.

With the return of Donald Trump, both the EU and China will be anxious about access to the US market and it may lead to a more measured China-EU trade spat than would otherwise have been the case.

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