Statement by Executive Vice-President Fitto and press remarks by Commissioner Hansen on the Action Plan for Fertilisers

Statement by Executive Vice-President Fitto

Today the College of Commissioners approved the Fertiliser Action Plan

I want to start by thanking Commissioner Hansen.

This Action Plan has two dimensions: short-term measures, and longer-term structural ones. Commissioner Hansen will walk you through the details.

I want to make three points.

First. We are aware.

We know what is happening. Fertiliser prices are rising sharply.

The agricultural sector is under pressure. Farmers are facing a difficult combination of factors — some structural, some unpredictable.

Agriculture is, in many ways, one of the most internationalised sector of our economy. It depends heavily on imports. Its success depends on exports. It is exposed to every shock in the global system.

We see this. We are monitoring it closely. And we are concerned. A spike in fertiliser prices does not just affect one farm — it affects the entire food supply chain.

Second: we are already working. There is already something we can do — now.

Member States can already act — today — using the resources of the current Cohesion Policy programming period.

And this is not abstract. Cohesion Policy can concretely support the fertiliser value chain in several ways.

 It can fund facilities for wastewater treatment and the separate collection of municipal biowaste.

This scales up nutrient recovery and reduces our dependence on imported fertilisers.

It can support the deployment of organic and bio-based alternatives.

And it can strengthen the competitiveness of SMEs in the fertiliser sector, including skills and research.

This matters for all our regions — including remote areas which often face specific territorial challenges and deserve targeted attention.

Building on the Mid-Term Review of Cohesion Policy — which mobilised 34.6 billion euros for competitiveness and resilience — the Commission is actively encouraging Member States to seize these opportunities.

Third: that is not enough — and we know it. So we are going further.

This Plan is also about opening new avenues for the months ahead.

In the framework of the ETS review, the Commission will consider the specific situation of the fertiliser value chain, and options for additional flexibility while increasing decarbonised homegrown production, the production of bio-based (organic) and circular fertilisers, and securing availability and affordability of home-grown fertilisers in Europe, taking acount of the challenges and costs faced in the outermost regions.

We are working on greater flexibility for the use of alternative substances — including digestate — as recognised fertilising inputs. The science supports this. The farmers need it. And we need to remove the regulatory barriers that are slowing it down.

We are also looking ahead to the revision of energy policies. The fertiliser sector is energy-intensive. What happens in energy markets directly determines what farmers pay for inputs. As we review and adapt our energy policy framework, the specific situation of the fertiliser value chain must be — and will be — part of that conversation.

Farmers cannot absorb every external shock alone. We will not ask them to.

Farmers are at the centre of this work. They always are.

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Press remarks by Commissioner Hansen

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen

It is important for me to present this Action Plan for fertilisers today after working on it for several months.

It is not a day too early. I recently met a cereal farmer in France who has a farm of 400 hectares. He told me that if the situation does not improve, he will not plant anything on half of it to avoid using expensive fuel for his tractor and buying fertilisers. And this seems to be the general thinking among farmers, big and small.

This is the productive land that I refuse to lose. It is food security we cannot afford to lose.

Dependencies are vulnerabilities. Our structural dependency in the EU on imports is putting our food security and competitiveness at risk. For example: we import two thirds of our needs for urea, a commonly used fertiliser. It makes us more vulnerable to global price volatility.

It is simple: the more expensive energy gets, the more expensive fertilisers get. Fertilisers already cost 70% more now than in 2024. And they were already too expensive in 2024.

Farmers already struggle to make a living compared with other sectors of our society. This adds significant financial pressure on them. For farmers cultivating crops, fertilisers can represent up to 20% of their total input costs.

Summer is coming and this is when farmers will decide what to plant and how much fertilisers to buy. The time to act is now.

The Fertilisers Action Plan we present today is about securing Europe's food production, competitiveness and strategic autonomy.

First, we will support farmers and food security in the short term. We will provide immediate relief, much needed when the bills start coming in for the farmers.

The Commission will deliver a substantial financial support package to affected farmers before Summer. This is our commitment, and we will present it in June with the amending budget. This is crucial as support from the agricultural reserve lands quickly at the farm, as we do not have to go through national plans of Member States. 

In addition, we will also present targeted legislative proposals on the current Common Agricultural Policy to give more flexibility to the Member States in how they manage their CAP plans. We will provide them with options to redirect their unused funds to new liquidity schemes and to pay their annual CAP payments in advance, with less bureaucracy.

Combination of these measures, agricultural reserve and flexibility in national plans, will provide enough cashflow to run farms and keep producing.

Our upcoming legislative proposals will also recommend that Member States develop in their CAP Strategic Plans a new or updated eco-scheme or agri-environmental measure and step up investments under their CAP Strategic Plans, for example on precision farming. These new measures should aim to improve fertilisation efficiency, stimulate sustainable use of recycled nutrients and strengthen farm resilience.  Of course, I count on co-legislators to give to this proposal  the priority it deserves in their work.

We should, however, not depend only on chemical fertilisers, we have more organic and recycled solutions available too. They have an important potential we can tap into. We will therefore facilitate the use of digestates, which are a by-product of biogas production. Preparatory work is already underway, with the aim of providing practical solutions by the next growing season. 

We want also a proportionate implementation of the nitrates directive when it comes to so-called calendar farming, periods when farmers can and cannot spread manure. Climate conditions are changing. Commission will provide further clarifications to Member States which will allow them to adapt these rules to the reality of farming and climate conditions in their country. 

All these measures should provide fast relief. But we are not just treating the symptoms, we need to fix the system too.

As a second point, we must reduce our dependence on imported fertilisers by making it easier to develop and use European alternatives, in particular organic and bio-based fertilisers. For example, biogas and biomethane do not mean only domestic energy but also home-grown fertilisers in form of digestate.

But there is also algae biomass, different other soil enhancers, microbial solutions, biostimulants, recovery of nitrogen and phosphorus from the sewage sludge – to name only a few promising pathways.

We will assess our regulatory framework to strengthen the business cases of these bio-based solutions' products to make them more affordable over time. We will include voluntary and mandatory labelling schemes and minimum blending requirements with low-carbon or bio-based content.

Thirdly, we will launch an EU fertiliser value chain partnership. Fertiliser producers and farmers must work hand in hand, in a partnership to ensure competitiveness for everyone.

EU farmers must be part of the business case for home-grown fertilisers.

In the context of the upcoming ETS review, and without prejudging it, we will examine options to ensure that any additional flexibility for industry comes with responsibility.

Responsibility  to decarbonize the production, and responsibility to produce what Europe needs: increased production of bio-based and circular  fertilisers, and securing the availability and affordability of home-grown fertilizers in Europe.

We also need to make sure that these products – despite their higher price – are taken up by farmers. By giving the right incentives. By combining forces between CAP, carbon credits and ETS revenue. By making farmers part of the business case for nutrient recycling. Such win-win approaches ensure availability and affordability for farmers, uptake of European fertilizing products, and thus ultimately benefit homegrown industry.

We all agree that the value chain needs more transparency and more dialogue.

A central innovation of the Plan is the EU Fertilisers Value Chain Partnership, bringing together fertiliser producers, farmers and Member States. It is a structured forum for policy dialogue and practical coordination.

The partnership is about predictability: Predictable supplies for farmers. Predictable demand for producers. Predictable policy conditions for investment. As all players are part of the chain, solutions depend on partnerships. We will strengthen market monitoring and early-warning, propose a framework to ensure the availability of up-to-date data, and keep the Fertilisers Market Observatory as the central platform for market intelligence that informs all.

To conclude, this Fertiliser Action Plan is a clear call for action at all levels – European, national and private- and across all policies. Change will take time. But today, we set the course of action and the direction. We choose to put our food security, strategic autonomy and competiveness first, today and for the future.

Thank you.