2009 - 2014

Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development The Chair

[22.01.2014]

Mr Martin Schulz President of the European Parliament

Subject: Opinion on the motion for a resolution by Cristiana Muscardini, Roberta Angelilli, Francesca Barracciu, Franco Bonanini, Antonio Cancian, Sergio Cofferati, , Paolo De Castro, Elisabetta Gardini, Erminia Mazzoni, Claudio Morganti, Niccolò Rinaldi, on combating waste – B7-0489/2013, under Rule 120

Dear Mr President,

At the sitting of 16 January 2014, you announced that you had referred the motion for a resolution tabled by Cristiana Muscardini, Roberta Angelilli, Francesca Barracciu, Franco Bonanini, Antonio Cancian, Sergio Cofferati, Andrea Cozzolino, Paolo De Castro, Elisabetta Gardini, Erminia Mazzoni, Claudio Morganti, Niccolò Rinaldi, Patrizia Toia on combating waste – B7-0489/2013, under Rule 120, to the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development as the committee responsible.

At their meetings of 26 November 2013 and 21 January 2014, the committee coordinators agreed that an opinion in letter form on the motion for a resolution, under Rule 120(2), should be delivered.

The committee considered the motion for resolution at its meeting of 27 January 2014. At this latter meeting (1) it adopted the conclusions below:

1. The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development wishes to recall the European Parliament resolution of 19 January 2012 on “how to avoid food wastage: strategies for a more efficient food chain in the EU”1, which calls for food waste to be halved by 2025, as well as the Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 19 November 2008 on waste and repealing certain Directives2, and the 2011 FAO study on global food losses and food waste.

2. On a hungry planet, it is no longer tolerable for Europe alone to throw away 90 million tonnes of food in a single year (one billion 300 000 tonnes throughout the world, according to the FAO);

3. The committee therefore welcomes the laudable initiative of 700 Italian mayors, who have already signed the ‘Zero Waste Charter’, a handbook of good practice to avoid food, water and energy waste;

4. It notes, in this context, the praiseworthy establishment of ‘Waste Watchers’, the national monitoring centre on waste, set up by the Department of Agro-Food Sciences and Technologies and Department of Statistics of the ;

5. Calls on the Member States to collect more data on food waste and to ensure that the Commission is made aware of this data.

6. Urges the Commission, moreover, to establish a European Year against Waste, as called for in the above mentioned European Parliament resolution of 19 January 2012.

I should be grateful if you would forward this opinion to the Commission

Yours sincerely,

Paolo De Castro

(1 The following were present for the final vote: …)

1 2011/2175 (INI), A7-0430/2011, P7-TA (2012) 0014 2 OJ L 312, 22.11.2008, p. 3