Threads, solar and giant farming lobbies

How much sway do giant interest groups have over the way our food gets grown? This week we're delving into the murky world of farm lobbying with Thin Lei Win, one of the reporters behind a fascinating investigation into the highly influential Copa-Cogeca group. We're also talking about the mass FOMO outbreak resulting from Threads' absence from the EU and what the hell is going on with Europe's electricity prices right now.

We're running a survey to help us improve the podcast! If you've got five minutes to spare, we'd be really grateful if you could answer a few questions here: https://iter.ly/fcmgq 

You can find Lighthouse Reports' investigation into Copa-Cogeca here, with links to their partners' coverage in six languages. You can sign up to Thin's excellent newsletter on food and the climate here. 

This week's Isolation Inspiration: Songs from Spain and microfiber make-up remover cloths.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at ⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠ (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by ⁠leaving us a review⁠ or giving us five stars on Spotify. 

00:22 Sunny days watching the Dutch government collapse

04:25 Bad Week: Threads FOMO in Europe

16:42 Good Week: Bountiful solar power

27:45 Interview: Thin Lei Win on the outsized influence of Europe's giant farm lobby

42:08 Isolation Inspiration: Songs from Spain and microfiber make-up cloths

45:38 Happy Ending: Underwhelming but very very old

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

INTRODUCTION - 00’22

DOMINIC: Hello Katy!

KATY: Hi Dominic, you sound cheerful.

D: Yes! I'm finally on break. Well, not from the podcast, but from rehearsal, which is really nice.

K: Yay! Finally. Nice to have you back out of a windowless theatre.

D: Yeah. And I stopped rehearsing just in time for the Dutch government to fall so I could be glued to the television watching as the whole political world here has just completely turned upside down. It's mad.

K: It's funny, even over here, you know, we always used to think about Mark Rutte as that man who was going to be in charge in the Netherlands forever. Not so, it seems.

D: No, he's decided he's actually stepping away from politics completely. And I'm not going to talk about it much more this week, because I frankly think we talk about the Netherlands enough on this show, but we will come back to it another time. And all I will say for now is that there's like a huge sense of uncertainty for what is about to happen politically with this election, which probably won't be until the late autumn, but it feels like there are so many moving parts and anything could happen. And there is a distinct possibility that this populist farmers’ party could become one of the biggest parties, if not the biggest party.

K: Wow, upside down politics in the Netherlands. 

D: Yeah.

K: Not such a boring country after all, congratulations!

D: I know! How's life in France?

K: Oh, you know, I'm having a wonderful time as a increasingly pregnant person in this extremely hot city of Paris right now. My heat rag is working overtime. Thank you by the way to listener to Johanna in Switzerland, she was not only very supportive in the face of your mean comments, Dominic, in suggesting that my damp towel that I've been carrying everywhere is disgusting. She also offered a pro tip that you could put a drop of lavender oil on it and make yourself for a beautifully fragrant damp towel, or heat rag.

D: That does make it sound less disgusting. I mean, I don't have a problem with the fact that you're doing this. It's mainly the branding, I think – ‘heat rag’, you could really do better.

K: Climate change is gonna turn the rag into a fashion item, I can guarantee it. Um, anyway, before we get into this week's episode, I wanted to let you know, listeners, that we are running a survey for the next couple of weeks to try to get a better idea of what you want to hear from us – whether there are topics that you think we should be talking about more, maybe new formats you'd like us to try out, we are all ears. So if you've got a few minutes to spare, we'd be incredibly grateful for your feedback, you'll find the link right there on the screen.

D: Yeah, please do fill it in if you've got a few spare minutes. We did the last one, I think in like 2020. And it really helped us know what was working and what wasn't working. And it did help us steer this podcast ship in the right direction. So we'd really appreciate any feedback. Thank you!

K: But what are we actually talking about this week?

D: We are going to be speaking to Thin Lei Win, a journalist who has been working on a huge investigation with Lighthouse Reports looking into the murky world of lobbying from the agricultural industry in Europe. Agriculture is obviously the reason why we are all able to find foods to eat, and agricultural policy is a central policy area for the European Union, which is responsible for ensuring that Europe should never go hungry again. But are the lobbyists with the loudest voice representing who they say they are? And are they willing to cooperate on transitioning this huge industry to a more sustainable model, with all the terrifying challenges that climate change is bringing? These are some of the questions that Thin will help us unpick – after we chat about who has had a good week and who has had a bad week in Europe.

BAD WEEK - 04’25”

K: Who's had a bad week?

D: It's been a bad week for Europeans living in the European Union, after we've all been excluded from the buzziest new app on the market, Threads. It's from Meta, the tech company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and the early data suggests it is one of the fastest growing apps of all time, if not the fastest growing app of all time. All of this despite the fact that you cannot download it in the EU because Meta decided not to make Threads available in the EU to regulatory concerns, at least for now. 

K: Boo.

D: This decision has led to a continent-wide epidemic of FOMO from Europeans who aren't able to try out this new text-based social media app, which has been described by some as a Twitter killer, so a possible replacement app to that crumbling Elon Musk-owned site. But is it really a bad week for Europeans? Are we actually missing out? I hope we can answer some of those questions during this Bad Week segment. And first, I wanted to ask you a question, Katy, I understand you somehow managed to get us a Europeans podcast account on Threads, despite the fact that you reside in the EU. How did you do that?

K: I’m worried we shouldn't be talking about it, are we gonna get arrested by the internet police?

D: I don't think you are. I heard some other people talking about doing it on another podcast. So I think it's fine.

K: Well, just out of curiosity, I thought I would see on my phone if I could change country to the United Kingdom – which is the country that I'm from, just before the police come – but yeah, I just changed the Apple Store. And then lo and behold, it let me download it, which it seems like some other people in Europe are doing. Sorry to dob everyone in along with us. But there's a few people there from Europe. 

D: It sounds actually very shady to me and I don't think you should have done it. 

K: I did it because you told me to!

D: You're right. I'm also actually pleased you did it, because it means you can tell us about how it functions. How have you found it? It was all for journalism, that's like enough of a legal defence, right?

K: Yes, absolutely. This was 100% investigative. Er, it's a wonderful place. It looks sort of reassuringly boring, a bit like Twitter crossed with a bit of Instagram, in that most people are automatically following everyone they follow an Instagram, which is probably slightly different from the people you follow on Twitter. In our case, it's more sort of normal people, and less policy wonks and politicians and things like that. So there are more recipes and cute cat pictures. And for now, it seems actually quite pleasant.

D: That's nice to hear. And it does seem like it's getting some okay reviews,as far as new social media apps go. People are describing it as a kind of sanitised, somewhat bland imitation of Twitter, which is maybe what we all need right now.

K: It's exactly what I need. My Twitter had just become 100% very, very far-right people from America, and people trying to sell me cryptocurrencies.

D: Yeah, Twitter has definitely become a less fun place to be. I mean, I haven't been on it myself, but from what I've read, it does definitely sound like it's less newsy. And there are a few things that seem like they will annoy old school Twitter lovers like you and me – for example, you can't currently allow the settings to only show you content from people you follow. So you are constantly having content thrown at you by the algorithm, which may make this a very addictive and successful and money-making app in the long-term, but I think it may make it inferior to the OG Twitter, for now anyway. But one thing is for sure – it has been released with very good timing, just as Musk's Twitter was having its latest descent into obsolescence with the rather bizarre introduction of a daily limit of tweet views that was imposed last week. And based on the huge numbers of people, at least outside of the EU, who have downloaded Threads in the first few days, it seems like it will probably be a huge success. But does it have the qualities of making it this long-awaited Twitter killer that many have been waiting for since Elon Musk took over Twitter and made it a less fun place to be? I'm not sure, from the reviews I've read, whether it really will do that, or whether it will like find a different market of people who are already on Instagram. And as you mentioned, probably the main reason why Threads is growing so rapidly is because it is bundled with Instagram, which makes it very easy for people outside of the EU to sign up. And that is the main reason why it's being taken more seriously as a Twitter alternative than other alternatives out there, like Bluesky or Mastadon. So it doesn't really seem to have so much to do with its specific features, but because it's just so very easy to sign up and keep your followers from Instagram, so you're not starting from scratch. But yeah, even if you had a nice time there, I'm not sure any of us in the EU really need to have FOMO or go to the lengths Katy went to hack the system. But it has definitely annoyed some people that we aren't able to access the app in the EU.

K: I mean, surely it is going to come to the EU at some point, right? This is an absolutely massive market of internet users. Like, what's holding it back?

D: Well, I actually don't know how quickly it will be here. Meta’s spokesperson told Politico that it was because of upcoming regulatory uncertainty. And with these kinds of vague words it seems that they're probably talking about the Digital Markets Act, which is this big piece of legislation which, among other things, aims to make the digital market a fairer playing field for competitors by regulating big tech companies like Meta. And one of the key requirements is that these big tech firms cannot combine the data they have on customers that they collect from two different services. So that is somewhere that this Threads thing could fall foul of regulation, because it is bundled with Instagram. Apparently, Meta has asked the EU Commission for some clarification around how this legislation is going to be implemented. The regulation has actually already been signed into law, but it's not fully functional for big tech companies until March 2024. So maybe they'll come up with some, like, quick solution and all will be well and Threads will be in our app store. But more broadly, Meta is perhaps right to be cautious with the release of Threads in Europe, because Meta has a growing pile of hundreds and hundreds of millions of euros in fines that they are due to pay in Europe for things such as violating children's privacy, breaches of data scraping, cookie consent violations and historical data breaches, amongst other things. They actually received a record 1.2 billion-euro fine in May this year for not complying with the EU’s privacy laws. This was around the transfer of European Facebook users’ data to the US. They're appealing a lot of these fines, so who knows if they’ll have to pay them in the end. But there was also a rather enormous ruling last week at the European Court of Justice on July 4, when judges ruled that Meta has to get user consent before gathering data for targeted ads. This was quite, like, an existential ruling for Meta that could put into question their whole business model in Europe. So yeah, relationships between Meta and EU regulation… Can you have a relationship with regulation? Let's go with that – 

K: Sure you can. 

D: It's been quite tense lately, and some are reading Meta’s decision not to launch Threads in the EU as a lobbying tactic, just whilst the EU is putting the finishing touches on some other laws, their AI and anti-trust laws, which will also both affect Meta. And possibly some politicians in Brussels are feeling the heat. It may not make the EU any more popular if European citizens feel like they're missing out on the latest hot thing online because of some boring-sounding regulation, even if that boring sounding regulation is there to protect us citizens.

K: Yeah, it's quite hard for me as someone who enjoys trying new things that look fun and interesting to be told, like, ‘You know, maybe it's good news that you can't have this,’ it's like saying, ;It's good news that you can't have sweets. They’re bad for your teeth!’ But with Threads specifically, are there actually some really quite serious privacy concerns around it?

D: Well, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg’s nemesis, certainly thinks so. And he very quickly started criticising what data is being collected, according to the App Store’s listing. And actually, for once I agree with Elon Musk, it does seem like threads can – 

K: Woah.

D: Yeah, I know quite a thing. It does seem like Threads can collect a very broad spectrum of sensitive information from users, including health and financial data, precise location, browsing histories, contacts, and much more. I guess this isn't surprising considering they will eventually hope to make money from this product by selling precisely targeted advertising to companies who want to know the ads are going to be targeted at people who will find them very relevant. But with this data, they will know about your race, your sexual orientation, your religion, even your pregnancy status. And maybe everyone is already just used to this level of invasiveness from these big tech companies, but it is a bit gross how much Meta is asking for with this app.

K: I mean, Twitter does also, to be fair, collect quite a lot of data about its users, no?

D: Yeah, it does. But from what I read, it's less broad than what Meta are collecting with Threads. Quite an interesting angle I heard about this story is that some European politicians are saying that the fact that Meta has decided not to launch this app in the EU is a really good sign that the EU regulation is working. But yeah, that's not going to convince you, is it, when you want those sweeties?

K: Give me my sweets! I don’t care about any of the – of course I do, that's a terrible thing to say. Thank you EU parents for being responsible, blah, blah, blah.

D: I think I was more like you before I started reading up on this. But having spent like a day reading about Threads and all the money that Meta can make out of all this data that they own on us, I don't know if I care that Threads is not going to be here for now. I'm sure there will be people out there that disagree with me. But does it really matter? From what I've heard from many people who are on this app, it's not as good as the original Twitter.

K: But it might be once all Europeans get there. That's what's missing.

D: Interesting angle. I've actually realised while doing this research that the thing I'm sad about isn't that we don't have access to Threads, but that Threads almost certainly isn't going to be the Twitter alternative that I am so hungry for. And because of Meta’s technical resources, and its decision to bundle Threads with Instagram, it was such a unique opportunity for there to be this Twitter killer app. But if it doesn't actually do the things that I want an app to do, and if it isn't as newsy as Twitter is, then I doubt it's going to be what the world needs. And Twitter was amazing, at a certain point in its history, don't you agree?

K: Yeah, of course, you think about how many things like, you know, the Arab Spring, huge social movements, even emergencies – people have used Twitter as an extremely valuable resource. I don't know, I think I'm a bit more hopeful than you that it will become newsier. Have faith, Dominic.

D: Okay, I'll try and be hopeful. I was gonna say that maybe this isn't Bad Week for the EU that we don't have Threads, but Bad Week for the world that we don't have a good Twitter replacement. Or maybe it's Good Week for the EU's privacy laws that they're working. Sorry, I've made a big mess of this Bad Week, I can’t remember who I’m meant to be giving it to. Save me, who's had a good week?

GOOD WEEK - 16’42”

K: I am giving a Good Week to bountiful solar power. Not for the first time actually – when we made our fifth anniversary episode last November, our producer Katz actually gave a Good Five Years to solar power, let alone a Good Week. But I wanted to talk about solar energy again this week, because of a rather eye-catching headline from Bloomberg, which said, ‘European power prices plunge below zero as solar output booms.’ 

D: Ooh.

K: That's right, last week, Europe's solar energy producers produced so much electricity that the price of energy actually dipped below zero multiple times early last week. And in various countries, actually, including Germany, and the Netherlands and in Denmark.

D: That sounds maybe potentially great, but what does it mean? 

K: Yeah, it's one of those things that makes you think, ‘Oh, cool! Wait… Huh?’ And it's maybe not quite as wonderful news as it sounds when you first hear it. But it is still an indicator of just how much Europe has increased its solar energy capacity of late. But what does it mean to have negative energy prices? Like, how is that even possible? Just to massively oversimplify for a second, and big apologies to any energy experts listening, the electricity markets work similarly to other markets, right? In that the price at which nuclear power plants and coal-fired power plants and solar farms, etc, are able to sell the electricity that ends up on the grid – that price goes up and down, depending on how much supply there is and how much demand there is. So back in the winter of 2022, for example, when we were in the midst of this extremely painful energy crisis across Europe, there was high demand because it was winter, and people needed to heat their homes, and there was less supply, because effectively the Russian gas tap that we had previously relied on so merrily, largely got cut off after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So that high demand and low supply resulted in these eye-wateringly high energy prices, which then got passed on to us consumers. Right now we've got the opposite situation. It's been super sunny, you might have seen all of these very alarming headlines day after day recently about it being the hottest day on record. But on the flipside of that utterly terrifying news, there's been a ton of solar production recently! Hurray!

D: Yippee!

K: Gotta look on the bright side, Dominic. And as we're not in the middle of winter, people haven't got the heating running. So demand is lower. There's masses of supply. Ta-da! Electricity is super cheap at the moment.

D: I get how it could be cheap. But how does it work when electricity prices are actually below zero? So you're getting paid to use the electricity?

K: Not necessarily you. It has a lot to do with the fact that it's actually quite hard to store unused electricity. Humans are getting better at storing it. We're finding new ways to do it. But if you think about how we generally store electricity in the household, it's in batteries, right? And we do actually use what are effectively giant batteries to store some of our unused energy, but not like on a continental scale. We also use a lot of this quite cool technology called pumped hydro storage, which is actually quite ingenious. Basically, if you've got excess electricity that you want to store, you can use that electricity to move lots of water from a reservoir uphill to another reservoir. And then later on when you need the energy, you release the water, and then use the wooshing downwards release of the water to turn hydroelectric turbines, and voila, you have that electricity that you had been saving up. 

D: That’s so clever.

K: Very clever. I fell down a bit of a pumped hydro storage internet rabbit hole, it's a fun place to go. So we can store some unused energy, but nowhere near as much as we produce at a time like this when the sun is shining upon Europe, and the solar panels are soaking up huge amounts every day.

D: I actually have solar panels, and my husband has this theory, which I don't know how much it's based on fact, whereby when it's like a really sunny day, he says we should like put on the washing machine and the dishwasher and use even the dryer, which we never use, because otherwise the electricity grid can overload because there's too much electricity in the system, because of all these people with solar panels in our neighbourhood. Do you think there's actually any truth in that?

K: A bit, maybe? Maybe some energy experts should write in and advise Thomas directly. But another part of the problem is definitely that producing electricity isn't like producing a normal physical product that can just be thrown out if you accidentally make too much of it, right? Like it needs to go somewhere. And the systems that we have built, to move electricity around, are quite sensitive to overloads. So if there is an excess, you kind of need to get rid of it pronto. Which is why we end up in these weird situations where – just sort of zooming out from your solar panels for a second – certain types of big big power plant might have to say, ‘Okay, we really need to get rid of this excess electricity, or it's going to blow our systems. We have two options: we can either shut down the plant for the day, or we can pay someone to take the excess electricity off our hands.’ And it sounds crazy, but it actually ends up as more cost effective, in some cases, to pay someone to take the excess electricity. And that is how we end up with negative energy prices on the wholesale market. It's not a totally new phenomenon. It actually happened across a big swath of Europe during COVID, when demand was very low, everywhere from Ireland to Slovakia. But it's something that's happening a lot more these days, you'll keep seeing these headlines about negative energy prices. And one really big reason for that is that we have been investing loads in solar energy in Europe across the EU. We added solar installations equivalent to 41.4 gigawatts last year, which is enough to fully power more than 12 million homes. In Spain, for example, there was a report last month saying that they are on track to produce more than half of the country's energy from renewables this year, it'll be the first of Europe's top five economies to do that. Portugal thinks it'll be fully renewable by 2040. So there's loads more supply – yay for solar and wind. But on a less ‘yay’ note, we can't store most of this electricity, which is why we keep seeing these negative prices and your husband is wondering if he should be randomly running the dryer in the middle of summer.

D: So if the price for electricity keeps regularly going below zero, does that mean that regular customers can expect to start getting a negative bills, ie money back from their electricity providers?

K: Most of us probably not. What tends to happen when the price falls below zero is that some giant consumer of energy, so maybe a really big factory or like a state water treatment plant or something like that, they will be paid to consume more energy for a bit. Most of us individual consumers across Europe are on fairly rigid contracts that don't fluctuate that much. If you're lucky, you might end up getting some money back on your next electricity bill. And we are starting to see more flexible energy contracts in some countries where you pay less at times when there's loads of solar and wind power, and the EU wants more of us to have contracts like that. And I actually did see a tweet from a man in the UK last week. It was a screenshot of his energy supplier app which did indeed show that at that moment, he was being paid to consume energy. And he said he was going to leave his fridge door open to make money, which I hope was sarcastic. 

D: That's pretty strange. 

K: Not a great thing to do. But generally, still, we as consumers don't usually get to pay zero for our energy because there are additional costs factored into our bills, right? So stuff like the cost of getting the electricity from the grid to our home, and taxes. So let's put it this way: most of us are not going to get phone calls saying like, ‘Hello Dominic, this is your energy company calling, we're gonna pay you to switch on all of the lights in your house for the next 10 hours.’

D: Which world do you live where an energy company calls people?!

K: In France people phone people!

D: Oh, really?

K: We're living in the past here.

D: But presumably these negative prices are going to be something that we see more and more of, as wind and solar power makes up a bigger proportion of our energy supply?

K: If we don't sort out the whole storage thing, yeah, we are going to see more of these negative prices. I mean, if we managed to become amazing at storing excess energy, we wouldn't end up in a situation where producers are having to pay people to use it up. And you might say, you know, ‘Well, why is it a problem if we have negative prices sometimes? Is it really so bad?’ But the real issue here is that if we were able to store all of the excess energy that gets produced at times like this, when it's crazy hot and sunny, we could use it at times when it's less hot and sunny, like the middle of winter, and then we will be much less likely to have to suffer through soaring prices when there's low supply and high demand, like in the winter of 2022. So just to be clear, I don't think it's a good thing in itself that the energy prices have been dipping below zero lately. I actually think it's a symptom of an issue that we need to sort out. And it is something that people are trying to fix. Like last week, for example, a bunch of new investment was announced for this hydro energy storage project in Estonia. But you can't build these things overnight. And there does seem to be a bit of a lack of an overall strategy on this. There are some reforms of the EU energy market going on right now, and the need for more storage is sort of part of those discussions. And back in March, the European Commission came out with some recommendations on energy storage, but they were mostly just like, ‘We recommend that countries get their act together on this.’ So there's a lot that needs doing. But having said that, I have still decided to look on the sunny side and give Good Week to solar. Because I think these negative prices are a reminder of just how much solar power we have in Europe these days, and I think that's worth celebrating.

* * * 

D: We've got some lovely new supporters of the show that we want to shower with public thanks: Elisabeth, Aisling and Sarah. They all went to patreon.com/europeanspodcast and decided voluntarily to donate a monthly amount of money to this podcast, which is still and will remain free at the point of use, but only continues thanks to all these lovely people who throw some cash into our virtual tip jar. So thank you for doing that, and please consider joining them.

K: I love that you said that they did it voluntarily, as if it's possible that we might have previously been forcing people at gunpoint to support this podcast. Just to clarify, we have not been doing that. 

D: There's definitely been no strong-arming into Patreon support, I promise.

INTERVIEW WITH THIN LEI WIN - 27’45”

K: How much do you know about like how our food gets

made? 

D: Alarmingly little, actually. 

K: Yeah, I'm also gonna go with alarmingly little. I'm one of these people who lives in the city and often feels like, you know, when I pick up a vegetable at the supermarket and hold it, I don't really know anything about how it got there. But I am trying to fix that, and this week's interview is a very good conversation for helping me on that journey, I think. I feel like one of the things that we generally know about how the EU operates is that lobbying plays a pretty big role in how our laws get made, often not in a good way. And agriculture is one area where that lobbying is super present. Beyond vaguely knowing that, though, I don't feel super well-informed about how this lobbying works or how it affects our food policies. So I was really interested last week to read a new investigation from Lighthouse Reports. They’re a great investigative media outlet who do a ton of cross-border investigations in Europe. And this latest inquiry of theirs looks at farm lobbying in the EU. Specifically, it looks at Europe's biggest farm lobby, which is an organisation called Copa-Cogeca. Sounds like a kind of fun fruity cocktail.

D: It does!

K: But it isn't, it's a farming lobby. Anyway, Lighthouse Reports assembled this big team of European journalists to look into this lobbying group and try and figure out who they represent exactly and what kind of an impact they're having on our policies. And their findings were a little troubling. I’ll let our guests tell you more – Thin Lei Win is one of the reporters who worked on this. She's originally from Myanmar, these days she's based in Italy. And she specialises in writing about food and the climate.

K: If you go on Copa-Cogeca’s website, it says very clearly that they represent more than 22 million farmers. Do they actually represent more than 22 million farmers?

THIN: The short answer to that question is that no, they do not represent more than 22 million farmers and their families. What we have discovered in our investigation is that they represent a subset of farmers. But definitely not 22 million, and their secretary-general you know, Pekka Pesonen himself, admitted to our media partner Politico that they do not represent 22 million farmers. Now. he couldn't give the exact number of farmers that they represent. And in our, you know, six plus months of reporting, what we have discovered is that it's really hard to get the exact membership figures. They're either opaque, unavailable, unreliable or unrealistic.

D: But they're still not changing it on their website. 

T: Nope, it's still there.

D: So you and your colleagues spoke to loads of small-scale farmers for this investigation. What kind of things did they say in terms of whether they feel like their interests and perspectives actually get communicated up to the people who make policies in Brussels?

T: Yeah, so you know, we spoke to nearly 120 people, and about half of them were mostly small-scale farmers, and they have very different priorities compared to members of Copa-Cogeca. And I think the biggest difference is in the way that the Common Agricultural Policy is structured. It's a system of subsidies for farming and it is the single largest item in the EU budget, it accounts for about a third. So it's a lot of money. And for a very long time, right, 80% of that budget had gone to 20% of the biggest farms. And what, of course, this has done is that the money has really concentrated to the biggest land owners. And it has also encouraged farmers to maximise production, which means engaging in monoculture. Now, monoculture is where you plant a single species of crop – trees, plants, whatever – on our farm. And scientists say that this is actually really bad for biodiversity and the environment. And pretty much all the small-scale farmers that we've spoken to, including unions that represent them, they want a cap on the CAP. And what this means is that they'd like to have a ceiling on, you know, how much these big farms can get. Yet, nothing has happened for decades. You know, the CAP was introduced about half a century ago. And that has not changed until now. The new CAP, which came into force at the beginning of this year, has a compulsory mechanism to redistribute at least 10% of direct payments to small-scale farmers. But but but, with a lot of things in the European Union, as I'm sure you know, the actual implementation is left to member states. And there is a loophole. And the loophole is that governments can derogate from this obligation if the redistributive needs are adequately addressed through other means. And that's what for example, Denmark has done. The Danish government has argued, among other things, that owners of small farms are old, they already receive pensions, and that small farms don't create jobs and therefore, there shouldn't be any capping or redistribution. So that I think is the biggest difference in terms of what small-scale farmers want and what they would really like to see in terms of change in policy. That has not happened for decades, and even when it happened, it was still sort of half-hearted. So I think that sort of illustrates the fact that they really don't get very much of a listen, in Brussels.

K: And Copa-Cogeca, on the other hand, do tend to be very, very influential in Brussels. For those of us who aren't familiar with how the murky world of lobbying works, how do big farming lobbyists like Copa-Cogeca actually shape policies?

T: So Copa-Cogeca is the only organisation invited to brief the EU Council, before every AGRIFISH Council meeting. And this is the meeting of agricultural ministers in the European Union. No other organisation gets that opportunity. And that gives you the idea of the kind of access that they have. And it's not just the Council, right? They have access to three key EU institutions when it comes to agricultural policymaking, the Commission, the Parliament and the Council. It's pretty remarkable. For example, the Commission is responsible for planning, preparing, and drafting laws that are then put forward to the Parliament and to the governments. And often this is done by DG AGRI, which is the Directorate General on agricultural rural development. And that is also a department that had historically been very close to Copa-Cogeca, you know, so even before the laws are put forward to the Parliament, and the governments, even in the prepping and the drafting stage, Copa-Cogeca was able to get their point across in this manner. Next step we have is the European Parliament. And we have lots of examples of emails sent by Copa-Cogeca policy officers and staffers to Members of Parliament, essentially giving very detailed suggestions on how to vote and what kind of amendments should be made and tabled. And you know, again, Pekka Pesonen himself also admitted that they do draft these amendments for the MEPs. Let me give you another example here. A Romanian MEP was the shadow rapporteur on a file on school scheme to provide fruits, vegetables and milk. You would think that giving healthy food to school children is something that is absolutely non-controversial and that everybody would be on board. Unfortunately, he received an email from Copa-Cogeca which sort of indicated that they know his position on the file while in the process of negotiations, so it means that they have access to the internal negotiating documents and positions. In the email the staffer from Copa-Cogeca asked this MEP to change his position, his position was to provide plant-based alternatives to children who are either lactose intolerant or allergic to milk. They want him to drop that, and sort of said that if he doesn't do that, there might be some sort of unpleasant amendment in the future. The MEP was really upset and took that as a sort of, like a veiled threat, and made a complaint. And Copa-Cogeca told Politico that they apologised to the MEP later for the ‘unfortunate’ choice of words. But the fact that they felt confident enough to contact a shadow rapporteur and say, ‘Oh, why didn't you change this so that you know, to avoid unpleasantness?’ I think, is telling. Also, a lot of people in the ministries of agriculture in member states have very, very close relationships with national farm unions, many of whom are members of Copa-Cogeca. What I have just described to you has been dubbed by academics as the iron triangle. And it is called this because this is a closed loop network, a very chummy relationship between the executive branch, the legislative branch and interest groups, when it comes to agricultural policymaking in the EU. And others just cannot get a way into this triangle.

D: Could Copa-Cogeca make an argument that it's fair enough that they have all this influence, because most of the food we eat in Europe is grown on these big-scale energy-intensive farms that they tend to represent? Or is that not even the case is the average European farm actually much smaller than those giant mega farms?

T: Absolutely, farmers should have a seat at the table. But when the biggest seat at the table is reserved for an organisation that claim to represent all farmers – because that 22 million farmers actually, you know, according to Eurostat, that's the number of farmers in the European Union – when that biggest seat is reserved for an organisation that claims to represent everybody but only represent a certain small subset of farmers, then the policies that get made and implemented are skewed towards the benefit of only that subset. Now, the vast majority of farms in Europe are actually small. EU has 9.1 million agricultural holdings in 2020. Of those, nearly 64% were less than five hectares, and at least 75% less than 10 hectares. So a vast majority of farms in Europe are small ormedium size. Now in terms of the amount of food produced, it's a bit harder because Eurostat said that about 300,000 very large farms produce about half of the EU’s total agricultural economic output. However, that total agriculture economic output often also includes not just food, but feed and fuel as well. There's also a fair bit that will also be exported. And so the real concern is that small farms are in a steep decline, and that the remaining farms are getting bigger.

K: Copa-Cogeca has opposed various reforms that experts think would make the way that we do agriculture in Europe much more sustainable. Can you give us a rundown?

T: I'll give you three. First, there's a provision in the new CAP, of the Common Agricultural Policy that actually requires firms to sort of leave some land fallow for biodiversity. And these are known as ecological focus areas. Now, within weeks of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Copa-Cogeca and other proponents of conventional and industrial agriculture, they started lobbying the European Commission to suspend this, and they said that Europe needs to produce as much food as possible to prevent hunger not only within the European continent, but also beyond. And they succeeded, and ultimately 21 states decided not to leave land fallow and instead decide to grow food. However, recently, there has been an analysis that came out from a number of environmental groups looking particularly in Austria as a case study, and they found that a vast majority in those cases, what was grown was actually not food but animal feed. Second, Copa-Cogeca has been against targets to reduce the use of pesticides and chemical fertiliser, and they've really pushed hard against it. They were successful in delaying this and they were successful in asking for more impact assessments. This actually goes against what science and citizens have called for, because there was a campaign called Save Bees and Farmers where more than a million European citizens signed a petition to say, ‘We would like more stricter targets.’ And hundreds of scientists also signed a letter saying, ‘We really need to be much more ambitious in terms of reducing our reliance on chemical or synthetic inputs’. And the third, they're now campaigning against the law to restore degraded areas, which is called the Nature Restoration Law, saying that this is going to be bad for farmers and agriculture, and it's going to be voted on this week. Their lobbying has been extremely successful. And a lot of the politicians, particularly groups like the EPP, have actually taken up those talking points to say that protecting nature is actually bad for our food production. Which, to me sounds completely counterintuitive. Because if you don't have functioning ecosystems, we're going to see more and more difficulties keeping up with the yields or producing food unless we continue to use synthetic inputs, which then leads to a vicious cycle because they degrade the environment, they you know, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. And then we're stuck in this unfortunate cycle.

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K: Thin is the author of a great newsletter, Thin Ink, it is all about the intersection between how our food gets made and the climate. Lots of the posts are about Europe, but there are also ones that are more global or focus on elsewhere in the world. I really recommend that you sign up. As always, the link is in the show notes, where you will also find links to the original reporting on this from Lighthouse Reports and their media partners, which include Copa-Cogeca’s response to the reporting.

ISOLATION INSPIRATION - 42’08”

D: What have you been enjoying this week, Katy?

K: Well, I was in search of some musical accompaniment for the research I had to do for this week's podcast. So I thought I would check out, for obvious reasons, the Spotify playlist of the Spanish EU presidency.

D: No way. 

K: Spain has just taken over the rotating presidency of the EU, and what better way to celebrate that though with a playlist of great Spanish songs? And it's actually quite good! It's a pretty eclectic mix. There is some Rosalía obviously, but also some flamenco and Catalan rumba and 1980s pop. I really liked this very summery song by this 90s indie band called Casa Azul, I'm adding it to my summer playlist. And just for you, Dominic, and for Producer Wojciech who is also a fan, you'll be pleased to hear that Spain’s Eurovision entry for last year, which you both loved, Chanel, has made it to the list.

D: That is great news. I love Chanel. But jas this year's Spanish entry not made it? I mean she was a bit of a flop but she was my favourite in Eurovision this year. 

K: Oh yeah, I forgot that you were big into Spain this year.

D: Blanca, Blanca Paloma. Remember, who had the ‘Eaea’ song?

K: I don't think she's on the list. Just goes to show, the EU presidency does not have faith in the most recent Eurovision entry. But it made for some very sunny listening while researching solar power. The playlist is called songs from Spain and it is on Spotify. What have you been enjoying?

D: I've got another rather left-field recommendation. 

K: Okay. 

D: It's a recommendation for wearers of make-up. And I wear a lot of make-up during performances in my day job at the opera. I don't wear it quite so often for my podcasting work, which is one of the joys of this thing, when no one has to see your face, am I right?

K: Face for radio.

D: But I've got quite sensitive skin and I often find myself having allergic reactions to the make-up or actually, even more often, to the make-up remover wipes or creams or solutions. That is until I discovered these small reusable microfiber make-up remover cloths. Doesn't this sound like an advert? It's not, I promise.

K: Why isn't someone paying us to talk about this?

D: I know. And it's also like totally not European. But it's what I've been enjoying in Europe, and they've completely revolutionised my make-up removal in a way that makes my skin happy and reduces waste from disposable wipes and the like, with these cloths. You only have to add water and somehow, magically, they really easily take off all this make-up even the heavy stage make-up I wear. So if you are a make-up wearer, for fun or for work, I really recommend you give them a try. There are lots of different brands out there offering this product, just search ‘microfiber makeup remover cloth’ and you'll find what I'm talking about.

K: So what you're saying is I'm not the only person who is carrying around a damp rag with me?

D: I guess that's true. Apologies for being so judgmental.

K: I’m just glad you're on Team Rag.

HAPPY ENDING - 45’38”

D: For my happy ending, I wanted to tell you about some new research from scientists suggesting they have identified the oldest known engravings made by Neanderthals. And they are really old, they are more than 57,000 years old, most probably. They are in a cave in the Loire Valley in France, not so far from you.

K: Lovely part of the world. What are they engravings of?

D: They are finger flutings, which is the posh word for finger markings that have been like rubbed and dabbed into the cave wall. To be honest, they're not the most exciting things to look at if you don't know what they are. They're kind of vague lines and dots made with the fingers. But they are really exciting. One of the archaeologists involved, from the University of Tours said, ‘These drawings have been applied, are structured and were not made quickly or without prior thought.’ Which is pretty cool. This cave was actually discovered way back in 1846. But there has been a lot more of the cave uncovered in the past 25 years. And maybe it's interesting to know that the previous oldest known Neanderthal markings were only 40 to 50,000 years old. So this smashes that record at 57,000 years old. and it's long before any Homo sapiens had made it to Europe – that was only 42,000 years ago. So, exciting news from the Loire Valley.

K: So is it like kind of coloured smudges? 

D: It's not colours, it's literally just like fingers that have like scratched away patterns on the wall.

K: Oh. How… how impressive. 

D: But look, they weren't even homo sapiens, they were Neanderthals!

K: You know what, there's a lot of modern art that's rubbish, so I'm gonna say this sounds great. Go Neanderthals!

D: We've got a new logo for our podcast.

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K: You can, of course, find us between episodes on a variety of social media platforms. Instagram @europeanspodcast, Twitter @europeanspod, and Threads, even though we're maybe sort of not supposed to be there. Come and say hi if you have also managed to sneak your way in, @europeans podcast. 

D: So naughty. 

K: And if you've got a spare few minutes this week, we would love it if you carried out our survey to let us know what you want to hear more of on the show. 

D: This week's episode was produced by Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak. We will be back next week with the latest inspiring and depressing stories from across this continent. But until then, have a good week everyone.

K: ¡Adéu!

D: Bye everyone.