Brazil takes a look at European environmental regulations

Within the framework of phase III of the “Support for EU-Brazil Sectoral Dialogues” project, funded by the European Commission and managed with the collaboration of FIIAPP, a series of visits to various European cities were arranged for a delegation from the Federal Government of Brazil.

The main objective of the activity is for the Brazilian government to learn how European regulations on the environment work in the context of the agricultural sector.

The first stop was a visit to the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat), based in Luxembourg, where the experts had the chance to learn about the work methodology used in collecting and processing the statistics used to track agri-environmental indicators.

The activity continued with a visit to the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission in Brussels. There, the visiting experts learned about the integration mechanisms for environmental concerns in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Launched in 1962, its main objectives are to improve agricultural productivity and guarantee European Union farmers a better life.

The representatives of the federal government also went to Paris to visit the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the French Ministry of Agriculture and Environment. There, in addition to seeing the analytical procedures for integration of environmental concerns, they met with experts from the Ecophyto programme, aimed at reducing pesticide use in favour of ecological farming methods.

To complete the tour, they made a stop in Spain, where they visited the Ministry of Agriculture, in Madrid, to learn how indicators are used in its work and about the application of agri-environmental tools and their integration in the CAP. Lastly, they visited three farms in Toledo in order to see how control of employment in rural manual labour, financed by the CAP, is carried out.