BRUSSELS — “Urban-rural divide? Which divide?” Peter Meedendorp, president of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), jokes from his Brussels office. On the other side of the screen Ariel Brunner, director of green NGO BirdLife Europe, joins our call from a farmhouse in the Italian Alps.

Both are dialing in to a joint interview with POLITICO that has a simple purpose: To find out whether, after a year of rural protest and heated electioneering, there is enough common ground between farmers, environmentalists and others with a stake in European agriculture to help chart a way out of the current crisis.

It’s been six months since European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen launched her Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture. With a second term now under her belt, she is promising to take the results and transform them within 100 days into an equally grandly named “Vision for Agriculture and Food.”

Meedendorp and Brunner represent their organizations in the dialogue — which continues — and have often been at odds. However, they agree more often than not, and sometimes even agree to disagree.

For starters, both believe it was worth a try.

Brunner joined the dialogue with “very, very moderate” expectations, but with “an open heart.” He recalls with distrust the “very big and unusual concessions to the farm lobby” von der Leyen made in the months before the European election in June.

Meedendorp is more optimistic. “As a young farmer you have to be, otherwise you wouldn’t go into agriculture,” he says. He recognizes that the dialogue has brought together people who aren’t used to being in the same room — comparing it to a “therapy session.”

Pre-election bid

Early this year, von der Leyen was facing protests organized by farming unions across Europe, angry at everything from import competition to environmental bureaucracy. Her own political family, the European People’s Party, actively courted the farm vote in the European election campaign.

In a tight spot, von der Leyen ditched key elements of the Green Deal that defined her first term, and issued her call for dialogue. She brought in academic Peter Strohschneider, who had chaired a similar exercise in Germany, to mediate the conversation. By calling the round table, she took some heat out of a polarized situation — and did her reelection chances no harm.

“Agriculture was a very hot potato [and] the dialogue allowed her to neutralize it,” Brunner said. 

Von der Leyen was able to take the floor of the European Parliament, he added, and “without having to say anything, get support from a whole bunch of people who do not necessarily agree with each other on agriculture. So in terms of her political agenda, it has already paid off.”

Now, with her second term secured, the relief that von der Leyen’s dialogue has brought by convening the dialogue is giving way to expectations of meaningful results.

“It’s impossible for her now to discredit the dialogue at this stage,” Meedendorp said. “She has created this dragon.”

Exposing the cracks

The round table — which has brought together 30 organizations including farming unions, green NGOs, food manufacturers and retailers — is due to deliver recommendations on future farm policy by the end of the summer.

But with the deadline drawing nearer, it remains unclear that participants will be able to find a meaningful consensus.

“The jury’s still out, really honestly,” Brunner, the NGO chief, said.

Front and center of the discussions is the Common Agricultural Policy — the farm subsidy program that accounts for a third of EU spending. 

The next iteration of the CAP, which funds direct payments to farmers based chiefly on land area, is expected to undergo deep changes with an eye to Ukraine’s potential EU accession and a more incentive-based approach towards encouraging sustainable farming practices.

“What I’m worried about,” Brunner said, “is that the CAP has a very painful history of unfulfilled promises” to solve environmental problems. “And with no offense to Peter, the farm lobby ran away with the money.”

“I have to agree with you that the CAP discussion is not finished,” replied Meedendorp, while adding that Brunner’s account “is not a shared narrative.”

Farmers depend greatly on EU subsidies, he explained, which in turn creates fear and affects farmers’ attitudes towards environmental strings being attached to them.

Seeing is believing

Among the participants at the table, Meedendorp said, there has been “a different level of commitment, and also of honesty.”

And while “some players have been putting a lot of effort to find the middle ground and get creative,” Brunner added, others have been “to put it politely, obstructive — just coming in with their standard propaganda.”

With a lot of issues still up in the air — and the closed-door dialogue still shrouded in secrecy — chances that von der Leyen will be able to fulfill her election speech promise and pull off a convincing action plan out of this dialogue aren’t high right now.

The 100-day countdown will only officially start once von der Leyen’s team of commissioners is chosen and confirmed by European lawmakers — that’s not expected before November. And launching that new agenda will depend on the results of the strategic dialogue. Skepticism is warranted. 

“I could probably see the situation where, in the end, I decide that it doesn’t add up,” said Meedendorp, the young farmer.

For Brunner, the NGO chief, seeing is believing: “We have been betrayed so often in the past. I’m not going to put my face to another iteration of the same thing.”