AUTHORS: Nora Förell (SLU), Elisabet Nadeu and Melanie Muro (IEEP)

Understanding how narratives shape policy is crucial for ensuring that environmental and climate goals remain central to EU agricultural governance. This brief calls for more inclusive and balanced policy debates to avoid discursive closure and ensure long-term sustainability. 

Over the past five years, EU agricultural policy has undergone a significant narrative shift. The Farm to Fork Strategy (2020) placed sustainability, climate action, and food system transformation at the heart of its agenda. In contrast, the Vision for Agriculture and Food (2025) reframes the central challenge as securing European farming through competitiveness, simplification, and strategic autonomy. This shift reflects broader political changes and has real implications for policy and funding. 

This policy briefing, produced by our visiting research fellow Nora Förell in collaboration with IEEP’s CAP & Food team, investigates how the language and framing of problems in EU agricultural policy have evolved and what this means for the future of farming, environmental legislation, and sustainability in Europe. 

The main findings in short:  

• Narrative shift: Sustainability is no longer the central problem; competitiveness and security dominate. 
• Farmer’s role: Farmers shift from agents of sustainability to entrepreneurs competing in global markets. 
• Discursive closure: Dominant narratives limit the range of acceptable solutions, sidelining systemic environmental reforms. 
• Conditional sustainability: Environmental goals are pursued only if they also deliver economic and strategic benefits—a “win-win-win” logic. 
• Policy consequences: Environmental objectives are deprioritized in the CAP and MFF proposals, with simplification used to justify regulatory rollback.

Briefing cover image Coralie Meurice on Unsplash