The Farm to Fork Strategy: an appraisal of the state of implementation – which dynamics beyond successful and flopping policy initiates?

The Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F), 1 As envisaged by the European Commission (EC) in 2019, is the most far-reaching reform of the EU agri-food system, at least since the adoption of the General Food Law in 2002. 2 The F2F Strategy aims to make the EU's food system fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly, and has been hailed as a cornerstone of the European Green Deal under the 2019–2024 European Commission (EC).3 Indeed, in the ambition of the EU executive, the F2F would reshape the current EU food system towards a more sustainable model in attaining the targets of the 2030 UN Agenda. 4 Moreover, specific attention has been dedicated to the impact of the EU standards on third countries by promoting the transition of countries outside the EU-27 "club" towards greener and stricter food standards. As the end of the term of office of the current EC approaches, it is possible to sketch an appraisal of the state of implementation of the F2F by analyzing the most important legislative initiatives. For each of them, the paper aims to verify if the original proposals of the EC have been diluted (or even rejected) or not, what have been the major sources of controversies within and between the European Parliament (EP) and the Council, and, all in all, if it is possible to identify national bias behind the interinstitutional negotiations that have led to the success or the flopping of the EC policy initiatives. For example, the rejection by the EP of the Regulation proposal on the sustainable use of pesticides has unveiled a deep political divide inside the Plenary, which mirrors the ongoing discussions among ministers in the Council on the impact of the proposal on the Member States agri-food production systems. At the same time, with all institutional players being the same, the co-legislators have been able to find an agreement on the proposal of Regulation on nature restoration, which will compel Member States to attain specific targets in terms of pollinating insects, agricultural ecosystems, etc. In both cases, a proposal to reject the EC's proposal was tabled in the EP: while in the former, a majority has been found to drop the proposal, in the latter, a slight difference in the vote cast of the members of the EP has led to an opposite result. Also, several policy initiatives outside the F2F have an impact, in a more or less direct way, on domestic and imported agri-food products. In these cases, a preliminary analysis seems to show a more favourable attitude of the co-legislators towards those initiatives which, while affecting the food system, have an environmental purpose, such as the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) 5 and the EC proposal on EU carbon removal certification framework6 likewise. Can we identify a dividing line between successful and flopping EC's policy initiatives affecting food systems in the context of the proposals and the underlying international scenario? What are the underlying causes?