European Parliament rejects Commission regulation by majority vote

The Union for the Promotion of Oil and Protein Crops (UFOP) welcomed the European Parliament’s decision to reject the draft delegated regulation classifying soybeans as an iLUC feedstock.

UFOP emphasises that by rejecting the draft, the European Parliament has also endorsed the EU Protein Plan presented by the European Commission the previous day.

The decision by members of the European Parliament has resolved the contradiction regarding the urgently needed promotion of protein crops in the European Union.

According to UFOP, it would have been absurd if European cultivation were promoted through EU and national measures aimed at ensuring a resilient protein supply, while at the same time a significant part of the value chain would have been lost due to the classification of soybeans as an iLUC feedstock.

This is because soybean oil extracted during meal production would no longer have counted toward national quota obligations and thus toward climate protection targets in the transportation sector, if it were used as a feedstock for biofuels. This has now been prevented.

From an economic perspective, legumes such as soybeans are not yet a guaranteed success in crop rotation systems.