Yara believes in a European future powered by lower-carbon food, decarbonized shipping and clean energy.
But to get there, the new EU policymakers will need to move from targets to incentives in order to speed up the green transition and secure Europe’s strategic autonomy in vital sectors. If they get it right, they can help ensure that European industry and agriculture remain competitive on the international stage and continue to play a central role in a low-carbon future.
Here are our recommendations.
All efforts to achieve the Farm-to-Fork ambitions must contribute to optimizing yields, producing healthier crops, enhancing soil health, and ensuring the economic viability of European farmers.
Our recommendations:
Promote the use of the Farm Sustainability Tool for Nutrients and encourage the use of fertilizers produced in the European Economic Area whose carbon footprints are on average around 50-60% lower than other similar imported products.
If the intention to evaluate and revise the Nitrates Directive is confirmed:
Collaboration, targeted incentive mechanisms, and knowledge exchanges are needed to support farmers and the food value chain in scaling up efforts to further reduce the environmental impact of agriculture. However, incentives for farmers to shift to more sustainable practices should not increase their administrative burden.
Our recommendations:
Large-scale decarbonization projects are needed to enable the green transition of hard-to-abate sectors. To achieve this, EU investments should shift from R&D to large-scale hydrogen projects. Huge investments from both the private and the public sectors, and close collaboration between the two sectors, will also be needed to meet the Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) ambitions for green hydrogen.
Our recommendations:
The decarbonization challenge is too large to disregard any technically feasible and economically viable options.
The focus should be on both blue (with carbon capture and sequestration) and green (renewable) technologies.
Our recommendations:
In shipping, clean hydrogen and clean ammonia can be game changers, and the Fuel EU Maritime initiative provides the right kind of incentives to deploy sustainable alternative marine fuels. In agriculture, using clean hydrogen in ammonia production, along with emission abatement technologies, can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of fertilizers.
Our recommendations:
Healthy soils are the foundation of our food system, playing a crucial role in the long-term sustainability of European agriculture.
We support the implementation of regenerative agriculture to contribute to growing a nature-positive food future.
Our recommendations:
Competitive access to global markets is crucial for European producers to secure investments and revenues to finance decarbonization. However, in its current design, a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) without the inclusion of a solution for exports from Europe to third countries with laxer climate legislation would result in carbon leakage, leading to higher global emissions. In fact, EU fertilizers are on average 50-60% less carbon intensive than non-EU ones. That’s why their competitiveness matters in global markets.
Our recommendation:
Learn more about the European elections on elections.europa.eu.