Climate policy EARTHQUAKE: The EU’s paradigm shift on cows: ‘Europe’s plan to support livestock farmers recasts a climate problem as a strategic asset’

Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen said the sector is”still a success story,” supporting 7 million jobs and generating €400 billion a year (not to mention €37 billion more in exports than imports). But it’s one now “at risk.” Livestock numbers are going down, Hansen said. Empty farmland, “especially at the eastern border, is a security liability.”

The cull that never was

Half a decade ago, Europe was debating whether to shrink its herds on purpose, in the name of nature and climate.

In the Netherlands, court rulings on nitrogen pollution pushed the government toward buying out farms. Early plans floated a cut of up to a third. In Ireland, a leaked government paper considered culling 200,000 cows to meet climate targets.

For farmers, nitrogen rules, methane targets and pesticide cuts blurred into a single attack. The cow had become a symbol of everything that was wrong with European farming, and many farmers saw it as a direct assault on their way of life. Then came the tractors.

The protests that clogged European capitals in 2024 and 2025 broke the political will behind the Green Deal, the EU’s flagship climate agenda. The Commission shelved much of its farm work and promised to steer policy from conditions toward incentives.

On Tuesday, the Commission applied that promise to the most contested corner of European farming. The strategy does not ask whether Europe has too many animals. It treats having too few as the threat.