CEETTAR OPINION on the Fit for 55 Package

21 October 2022. The "Fit for 55" package includes a series of proposals that should help to achieve the EU climate law's objectives. CEETTAR would like to widen the debate to the entire consequences of the Fit for 55 package for land-based contractors.

On 14 July 2021, the European Commission published its “Fit for 55 Package” (the package), as a series of proposals, which should help deliver on the European Climate Law target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by at least 55% by 2030 and enable climate neutrality by 2050[1]. As part of the Green Deal for Europe, the European climate law, and the package allow the European climate trajectory to be adjusted to the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

The Fit for 55 package encompasses a series of proposals which will have repercussions for the agriculture, civil engineering, machinery service, forestry sector and other earthworks ( the so-called “land-based”) contractors. 

This paper expresses the analysis and opinion of land-based contractors across Europe. A series of themes are addressed under three categories: rural and agriculture policy, machinery regulation and forestry.

What does the Fit for 55 package mean for EU rural and agriculture policy?

1. Leave room for a bottom-up and step-by-step approach
2. Promote contractors’ innovative services and technologies
3. Review the EU agriculture and rural policies together with the RED revisions

What does the Fit for 55 package mean for Mobile Machinery regulations?

1. A guaranteed energy price for agriculture and food
2. Adaptation of machinery and efficient data
3. Fuel of the future and the road to a fleet of machines with the future fuel
4. Further research on CO2 counting methods and a comparative advantage to carbon proactive contractors

What does the Fit for 55 package mean for forestry?

1. Make the forestry business more competitive
2. Keep counting primary wood biomass as renewable energy source
3. Give further EU support to foster tree planting

Another overarching priority: support to training

CEETTAR proposes:

1. Ensure that access to training for agricultural, rural and forestry contractors is guaranteed, even if their commercial activity does not fall within the remits of the chambers of agriculture;
2. While experimentation and knowledge sharing are developing within farms, especially by integrating complementary actors. However, it is not appropriate to dissociate initial and vocational training within the sector.

CEETTAR reminds that contractors play a crucial role in the dissemination of innovative technologies, in the entire agriculture value chain, by constantly sharing the technical and economic references gathered from their various clients.

Please click HERE to download the full text in PDF format of the CEETTAR OPINION on the Fit for 55 Package.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_3541