Newly released documents from inside Europe’s most powerful farming lobby reveal how it delayed, weakened, and overturned some of the biggest farming reforms in EU history, including a plan to cut pesticide use in half.
Copa Cogeca calls itself the voice of 22 million farmers across Europe and has unmatched access to EU lawmakers. It has even been described as a “partner in policymaking.”
So when the EU launched plans for major farming reforms in 2020, driven by concerns over climate change and the nature crisis, Copa Cogeca quickly got to work. In February 2021, it laid out its lobbying strategy. Dozens of documents from internal Copa Cogeca meetings, obtained by Grilled – an investigative journalism project focused on food systems – and the Guardian, offer a rare look inside the lobby group’s operations.
Controversial animal products like foie gras and fur would be defended, Copa Cogeca’s then secretary general, Pekka Pesonen, told members, “in the same way as tobacco.”
A key EU goal was to cut pesticide use by half to protect biodiversity. The documents show that Copa Cogeca’s response was to combine delay tactics with a more intense lobbying effort.
“The European parliament elections are in 2024,” a note from September 2022 reads. “Maybe it’s worth waiting until then. We need to force the [European] Commission to give up its goals.”
At that same meeting, the lobby group decided to demand a new impact assessment for the policy. The commission carried this out at the end of the year, slowing the policy process by six months. The following spring, it rejected a European parliament report on the policy as “offensive,” and its members presented privately funded research on the economic impacts to EU ambassadors at a Copa Cogeca event. The minutes note that member states “showed understanding.”
The documents also show the organization’s lobbying to protect the use of pesticides that harm bees and glyphosate, which the World Health Organization’s cancer agency has classified as probably carcinogenic. “Pressure permanent representations to support” glyphosate’s license renewal, the secretariat told members. “Copa Cogeca will send a letter to permanent representations.”
Thomas Waitz, a Green MEP from Austria who sits on the agriculture committee, said: “Copa Cogeca focused on sabotaging, delaying, and ultimately killing the sustainable use of pesticides regulation. They are acting in the interest of large agrichemical multinationals and against the wellbeing of small and medium farmers.”
The pesticide regulation was withdrawn in February 2024, just months before the elections that Copa Cogeca had been deliberately stalling for.
The EU is now debating a proposal that would remove the periodic safety reassessments required for pesticides already on the market.
Cutting red meat consumption was also a major focus. Every year, the EU spends hundreds of millions of euros promoting agricultural products, including “Become a Beefatarian,” a 2020 advertising campaign that sparked outrage among campaigners. When the commission proposed restricting that money from red and processed meat as part of its cancer plan, Copa Cogeca saw it as an existential threat.
“We’re not just talking about promotion policy here,” officials said at a meeting in January 2022. “If meat is treated this way there, it will spread to other policies as well.”
Copa Cogeca coordinated three named commissioners to challenge the new guidance, brought in the wine and alcohol lobbies as allies, and told its members to pressure their national governments to remove the restrictions. The next year, the measures were weakened. The year after, the health criteria were quietly dropped. Copa Cogeca’s verdict:”Lobbying has paid off.”
Copa Cogeca moved quickly to weaken rules on factory farms before the public could see them. A 2022 internal memo shows that letters to senior commissioners led to a 50% increase in the threshold for what counts as an industrial farm—based on the number of animals kept—before the proposal was even released. Analysis found this change cost the public €1.8 billion (£1.5 billion) a year in lost health benefits.
This was just the start of a years-long campaign. Lawmakers were taken on organized farm visits in Belgium. Media campaigns were launched. Letters were sent to EU ambassadors ahead of key European Council votes. On the day of the final parliamentary vote, tractors and invited MEPs gathered outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where a large screen showed the IED (Industrial Emissions Directive) vote live.
The final law was much weaker still, significantly raising the thresholds for poultry and pig farms and excluding cattle entirely. Only about 1% of Europe’s cattle farms would have been covered by the original proposal. Marco Contiero, agriculture policy director at Greenpeace EU, said Copa Cogeca had “chosen to shield a small group of highly industrialised operators responsible for a disproportionate share of pollution” rather than defend the majority of Europe’s farmers.
On animal welfare, Copa Cogeca’s private admissions and public positions tell different stories. At an internal meeting in 2021, an official said the industry could stop using cages immediately if it had financial support. But Copa Cogeca’s lobbying position demanded a transition period of up to 15 years. The European Commission is expected to announce plans to phase out cages for laying hens by the end of 2026, years after its original commitment.
On wolves, Copa Cogeca spent years trying to remove the animal’s protected status from EU nature law—a goal its own officials privately described as “probably naive,” since the directive had remained unchanged for 30 years. Yet, in September 2024, the presidium declared: “A major lobbying victory. The fight is over.” The Habitats Directive was amended in June 2025. Copa Cogeca’s documents show the organization immediately began drawing up a list of other animals and birds it wanted to target next.
Despite multiple requests for comment, Copa Cogeca chose not to respond.
A spokesperson for the European Commission said its decisions were made “on Europe’s terms, under Europe’s rules, and in the European interest.”
“Big agri’s interest is not in simplifying the Green Deal,” said Delara Burkhardt, a German MEP on the environment committee. “It wants to dismantle it.”
Read a longer report on this investigation at Grilled.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about how the European farming lobby influenced the EUs pesticide law covering beginner to advanced levels
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What exactly was the EU pesticide law that got killed
It was a proposed regulation called the Sustainable Use Regulation Its main goal was to cut the use of chemical pesticides in half by 2030 across the European Union
2 Who is the farming lobby youre talking about
The most powerful group is CopaCogeca a massive umbrella organization representing millions of farmers and agricultural cooperatives across Europe It has deep connections with EU policymakers
3 How did the lobby manage to stop the law
They used a classic strategy they argued the law would cut food production make food more expensive and hurt farmers incomes during a time of war and inflation They then pressured national governments to oppose the law which eventually led the European Commission to withdraw it
4 What was the main reason the law was proposed in the first place
To protect human health and the environment Pesticides are linked to health issues and kill vital insects like bees which are essential for pollinating our food
IntermediateLevel Questions
5 Did the farmers have a point Would the law have actually caused food shortages
They had a partial point The law set a very ambitious target without clear proven alternatives for every crop Farmers feared a sudden drop in yields However the law had a long phasein period and proponents argue that innovation in organic farming and precision technology could have filled the gap
6 What was the specific killer argument the lobby used
The Ukraine war The lobby successfully linked the pesticide debate to food security They argued that reducing pesticide use would make Europe dependent on food imports from lessregulated countries and that it was reckless to cut production while a war threatened global grain supplies
7 How did the lobby actually influence the European Commission to withdraw the law
They didnt just protest in the streets They worked through national agriculture ministers who then blocked the law in the EU Council Facing a deadlock and fearing a major political backlash from farmers ahead of European elections the European Commission President
