This article is part of the Danish Presidency of the EU special report.
Denmark’s incoming EU presidency is set to coincide with a bruising debate over the future of farming in Europe, and Copenhagen wants climate at the center of it.
Fresh off a historic domestic deal to tax agricultural emissions, Danish officials are touting their country’s “high ambitions” for green policy. Minister for Green Transition Jeppe Bruus said Denmark hopes to infuse its six-month presidency with lessons from home, where collaboration with farmers and a sweeping Green Tripartite Agreement last year marked a rare political consensus on climate and agriculture.
But as Denmark prepares to steer the Council of the EU from July, it finds itself pitching a climate-forward message to a bloc moving in the opposite direction. After more than a year of farmer unrest, a rightward shift in the European Parliament, and pullback from Ursula von der Leyen’s first-term Green Deal, the stage is set for a presidency marked more by firefighting than forward motion.
