My weekly update - Main contents

On Thursday I had a chance to meet with 150 journalists from the world of agriculture across Europe and answer their questions at the CAP Communications conference. And that afternoon I was proud to present awards to recipients from Austria, Denmark and Spain.

This past Monday saw the third meeting of the Council of Ministers for Agriculture and Rural development since I took office and the first of the new Latvian Presidency. On the occasion of Latvia's first Presidency of the Council, it was my pleasure to congratulate the Minister and President of the Council, Janis Duklavs, and to assure him of my full support for his Presidency.

The Council also discussed the issue of market developments, including the impact of the Russian import ban and we also discussed the future of the European sugar sector. I recalled the developments since the Russian ban was introduced and the range of support measures that have been introduced by the Commission to help producers particularly badly hit by the ban. I also insisted that member states must provide the Commission with the most up-to-date information on milk prices.

This month's Council gave me an opportunity to meet bilaterally with the Ministers from Sweden, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, the Czech Republic and Poland to hear their views on topics of most relevance in their respective member states. Later I addressed the European Rural Networks Assembly to thank them for the excellent work that they do in across Europe in their regions in explaining how Rural Development policy works and the opportunities it provides for all EU citizens.

On Tuesday I met with the Minister Tim Groser, the New Zealand Minister for Trade and Climate Change Issues. These meetings are always very useful opportunities for exchanges of views, which ensure that our respective positions are more clearly understood.

Wednesday's meeting of the College of Commissioners revolved primarily around the first orientation debate on the Capital Markets Union. It is one of the flagship projects of this Commission and ties in with the ambition to boost growth and jobs in the EU. Its objective is to create a real single market to help unlock the capital around Europe and put it to work in support of Europe's businesses, particularly SMEs. It also complements the work being done on the jobs, growth and investment agenda by the Commission. The Digital Single Market Commissioners Project Team, of which I am part, also convened on Wednesday. I see enormous potential for the work of this project team in building a genuine digital single market across Europe, particularly in terms of boosting job creation potential.

Developing international trade opportunities is an essential part of what we do, in terms of developing new market opportunities and reducing our dependence on a relative small number of traditional markets. In keeping with that theme I met the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China on Wednesday to discuss the potential business opportunities, which I look forward to exploring further when I travel to China, hopefully later in the year.

An important CAP Communications conference took place on Thursday. I had a chance to meet with 150 journalists from the world of agriculture across Europe and answer their questions. And that afternoon I was proud to present awards to recipients from Austria, Denmark and Spain. The agriculture journalistic community is very important to us in terms of relaying useful, up to date and reliable information to the agricultural community across Europe and those who excel deserve the recognition they received at this conference.

The Energy Union Commissioners Project Team met over lunch on Thursday to discuss the next steps towards the adoption of an Energy Union package quite soon. This is another area in which I believe that agriculture has a key role to play. I also spoke by telephone to the Austrian Agriculture Minister and, as with the bilateral meetings earlier in the week, we discussed issues of mutual interest and concern.

There is a lot of preparation around the office for the coming weeks. Next week I will take a local visit here in Belgium as part of my goal to visit each member state. These Member State visits give me an ideal opportunity to get a better understanding of farming practices in different parts of Europe and to engage with stakeholders and public representatives. The Junker Commission is determined that the Commission must get closer to the European citizen and how better to do that than by 'going out on the ground' and hearing at first hand the concerns and experiences of those citizens and their public representatives. Next week I will also address the Opening of the Food Innovation Summit on Tuesday and later in the week the College of Commissioners will get together to discuss some of the more pressing issues facing us in the coming months.