There are many ways to ruin Christmas. A heated political debate with the in-laws. An ill-timed bout of the festive flu. A forgotten ingredient for the yuletide feast. But if everything has gone miraculously well for you this festive season, POLITICO’s sustainability and data teams are here to lower your mood with a list of ways this fiesta of consumerism is wrecking the planet. And where better a place to start than with that fragrant emblem of Christmas itself, the Christmas tree? 1. GASSY CHRISTMAS TREES Christmas can be a gassy affair, and the tree that stands proudly in your living room is no exception. On average, a natural Christmas tree emits 16 kilograms of CO2 equivalent if it gets landfilled after use. That’s more than if you woodchip it or even burn it. But if you’re thinking of ditching the real tree and going for a plastic one, you might want to think again. Artificial trees have much bigger carbon footprints, emitting on average 40 kilograms of CO2eq. That’s not surprising because, newsflash, plastic is made out of fossil fuels. Then there’s the issue of pesticides. Natural Christmas trees are grown fast and often in monoculture plantations, which aren’t known to be havens for biodiversity. To protect these trees from pests and diseases, pesticides — including the controversial weedkiller glyphosate — are often spread on them. Last year, German green NGO Bund got a few trees tested across the country and found traces of pesticides on the majority of them. 2. TOXIC SLIME AND OTHER TOY-BASED NIGHTMARES As for what lies under the tree, the children’s toys don’t fare much better. According to a report from Toy Industries of Europe (TIE) out earlier this year, some 80 percent of the more-than-100 toys tested from third-party traders across 10 online marketplaces failed to meet EU safety standards, such as those set by the EU Toy Safety Directive. Slime products — kids’ favorite and an adult’s nightmare — contained over 13 times the legal limit of boron, a chemical linked to reproductive health issues. TIE puts that down to loopholes in the EU’s toy safety regime. While the bloc has the “strictest” rules on toy safety in the world, the lobby says, they don’t cover sellers from outside the EU when the sale is facilitated through an online marketplace. “It’s getting worse because these platforms are becoming more and more popular,” Catherine Van Reeth, director general at TIE, told POLITICO. This wasn’t inherently a bad thing, she added, saying TIE’s members — which include LEGO, The Walt Disney Company, and Barbie-maker Mattel — also sell through online platforms. “But the difference is that then you buy from a brand that you know and a brand that prioritizes safety, whereas we found that lots of toys that are being sold on online marketplaces are sold by third party sellers, often not from the EU, who don’t really care about safety.” The data backs this up. In 2023, the EU was a net importer of toys from the rest of the world, according to Eurostat, with 80 percent coming from China. Nearly all toy chemical alerts issued in the EU in 2024 involved those coming from … you guessed it. China. 3. EAT, DRINK, TRAVEL AND WASTE Presents, travel and extravagant, meat-heavy meals: all common features of the festive season, and all an environmentalist’s nightmare. Let’s start with packaging waste. We’re talking thousands and thousands of meters of wrapping paper. According to the environmental non-profit Repak, Ireland generated about 97,000 tons of packaging waste at Christmas in 2022. Then there’s wasted food. According to a study conducted by the French ecological transition agency ADEME in 2022, 83 percent of meals are prepared in excess quantities over the holidays. Meat consumption, in particular, soars over Christmas. And that has serious environmental impacts. Agriculture contributes 40% of global methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, thanks largely to the methane that cows and sheep belch out (methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases). Overall, livestock accounts for just under 15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations — about the same as steel and cement production combined. Feeding livestock also requires vast tracts of land to be cleared to grow the soy, corn and other grains that fatten up your Christmas turkey or your celebratory loin of beef. Meanwhile, grazing of grass-fed cattle and sheep also often means cutting down forests or draining wetlands. All that has a double environmental impact: it destroys biodiversity and eliminates vital carbon sinks, contributing to climate change and nature destruction. But when it comes to climate impact, nothing is worse than flying home for Christmas. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a round trip from London to New York emits well over half a metric ton of carbon dioxide per passenger. The average person in Europe emits just over seven metric tons of CO2 per year. In other words, in two flights you’ve emitted nearly a tenth of the emissions the average European does over an entire year. For a roundtrip flight between, say, Brussels and Berlin, the figure is just under 180 kilograms (0.18 of a metric ton) of C02, according to the the ICAO. Want to be greener? Take the train. Eurostar boasts that a train trip between Brussels and London emits 2.9 kilograms of CO2 per passenger, while a plane emits 23 times that, at 68.1 kilograms. All very well for those expats with a short trip home for Christmas. But how can climate-conscious Americans in Europe get home for Christmas in a greener fashion? Currently they can’t — unless they’re prepared to sail across the Atlantic Ocean Greta Thunberg-style. And with that, pour another glass of mulled wine and forget all about it. Joyeux Noël !

BRUSSELS — When the Netherlands’ Sicco Mansholt became Europe’s first agriculture commissioner back in 1958, the continent’s farmers faced a very different situation than they do today.  Officials in the postwar period were focused on guaranteeing food availability, boosting productivity with better fertilizers and pesticides, protecting farm incomes with fixed prices, and eating the difference to keep the cost of bread down for consumers. Mansholt’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) — created in 1962 — did all of that and more.  Yet by the end of his career, the Dutchman had come to understand the environmental and economic harms the CAP was wreaking. Soil degradation, water pollution and biodiversity loss were killing ecosystems, while production-based subsidies were spawning the infamous “wine lakes” and “butter mountains” of commodities to be destroyed or dumped on foreign markets. Since then, much has changed. But much has also remained the same.  The current CAP is the most climate-friendly ever, packed with eco-schemes and green rules. Yet it has still failed to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions and species decline. The €55 billion-per-year package enriches billionaires and impoverishes smallholders. Farmers are old and their children want different lives, leaving migrants to work the fields for little pay. Amid this crisis, academics from Wageningen University — Europe’s top agricultural institution — presented their annual Mansholt Lecture last week, along with an 80-page report on the major dilemmas affecting European Union farming. Here are the four main takeaways: 1. AUTARKY IS POSSIBLE … This will be music to the ears of Europe’s politicians, who are increasingly fretting about food security. It’s mostly alarmism, of course, driven by farmer lobbies who claim environmental overregulation risks leading to empty supermarket shelves. In fact, Europe’s agri-food sector is pretty self-sufficient. Its dependency ratio — the share of imported food and inputs by value — is around 10 percent, well below tech and transport, according to the report. The bloc is a net exporter, pumping out staples like meat, dairy and cereals, and bringing in ancillary products like coffee, cacao and tropical fruit. The problem isn’t food availability, but affordability, which won’t be solved by more production. Rather, it requires tackling the overreliance on certain price-volatile inputs, namely animal feed, fertilizers and energy. Over 80 percent of our soybeans, a key feed for pigs, chickens and cows, comes from Brazil and Argentina. Of the three fertilizer types, 30 percent of our nitrogen relies on foreign fossil fuels. Over 60 percent of mined phosphate is Moroccan. And nearly 90 percent of mined potash is from Belarus and Russia. Brussels can partly reduce those dependencies, and indeed has been trying to do so. The upcoming EU Protein Strategy aims to ramp up soybean cultivation in Italy and France, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has promised a Clean Industrial Deal in the first 100 days of her second term that will, among other things, incentivize the production of green nitrogen to make nitrogen-based fertilizers. Ruminants like cows, sheep and goats require dozens of crop calories to make a meat calorie. | William West/Getty Images “The EU could produce enough food … to feed its population, provided the production of protein crops and oilseeds is increased,” said the report.  But there’s a catch.  2. … AS LONG AS WE EAT LESS MEAT Livestock populations are shrinking by a few percent a year. Yet unless they fall dramatically — as consumers shift to plant-based diets — there is simply not enough land in Europe to grow all their feed, the report concluded. Of all the plants produced in Europe — for food, feed, textiles, wood, biofuels and bioplastics — 60 percent go to raising farm animals.  “That bar is huge. And if you’re looking for room for maneuvering, maybe it’s there,” said Harriette Bos, senior researcher at Wageningen, during the lecture.  Ruminants like cows, sheep and goats require dozens of crop calories to make a meat calorie. Pigs are slightly more efficient, but they eat less grass than ruminants, meaning they are much more soy-intensive. Poultry is best, converting feed to flesh with far less waste. That means white meat consumption can stay stable, but red must decline fast.  “A shift to more sustainable consumption patterns is needed,” the report summarizes, noting that this is crucial on health and climate grounds as well. EU citizens on average eat 40 percent more protein than is recommended, significantly raising their risk of cardiovascular disease and various cancers. Meanwhile, animal farming accounts for 85 percent of EU agricultural emissions, which have proven difficult to cut in recent years. The industry’s political clout has bought it a near-total exemption from climate targets, with EU officials delaying or shelving key legislation on sustainable diets and agrochemicals after bloc-wide farmer protests. 3. DIET IS NOT JUST AN INDIVIDUAL CHOICE Last week, Christophe Hansen, the nominee for EU agriculture commissioner, argued that meat consumption is an individual choice that lawmakers shouldn’t get involved in. “I think it is very tricky to say and impose top-down who has to eat what,” he told lawmakers during his hearing before the European Parliament’s AGRI committee. Europe’s top agri-food experts don’t agree. “The hesitation to intervene in our food choices stands in stark contrast to the commonly accepted use of pricing strategies to reduce demand for [fossil] fuels, as well as tobacco and alcohol,” the Wageningen paper observes. “Interventions are needed to support consumer behavior toward more healthy and sustainable diets.” Action should be targeted and nonintrusive, of course, given that “public steering [of] consumer behavior” remains “a socially and politically delicate matter.” Meat taxes, as Germany is planning, could be sound in theory and yet prove politically toxic. Rebalancing subsidies is a more subtle alternative: Over 80 percent of the CAP, for example, supports animal agriculture.  So too are educational campaigns, proper labeling and “indirect strategies such as binding agreements” with manufacturers and retailers. Livestock populations are shrinking by a few percent a year. | Stringer/Getty Images 4. WE SHOULD CONSIDER DEINDUSTRIALIZING ANIMAL HUSBANDRY  Most of Europe’s meat now comes from factory farms, which leak chemicals into soils and rivers, heighten the spread of animal diseases and antibiotic resistance, and violate animal welfare. Feed production “will also continue to compete with the production of crops suitable for human consumption.” With that in mind, Wageningen’s researchers presented an “alternative vision for animal husbandry.” The plan involves much smaller herds raised in areas unsuitable for arable farming (like mountains) or close to zones with high waste streams (like processing, manufacturing or distribution facilities), to be fed on waste and “raw materials.” “In this more circular approach, the primary role of animals would be to convert these non-human food streams, with the number of animals in a region determined by the availability of these resources,” the report said.

BRUSSELS — When Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the conclusions of her Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture last month, it looked like a PR coup. The seven-month forum on agri-food policy had calmed both riotous farmers and outraged NGOs, while yielding an apparently balanced report that she could loot for legislative ideas. Yet that success may be short-lived. Copa-Cogeca — Europe’s largest and most influential agricultural lobby — is hardening its position, POLITICO has learned. The group’s national members were outraged by some of the dialogue’s final recommendations, particularly the need to promote plant-based diets. After a raucous month in which members repeatedly blasted the Copa-Cogeca presidency — at a farm event in Hungary, in emails to its Brussels office and at the Copa presidium on Sept. 26 — the umbrella group wants to beef up its bargaining power at the European Board on Agri-Food (EBAF), the proposed successor to the Strategic Dialogue. “In the Strategic Dialogue, just five out of 29 participants were farmers,” Copa-Cogeca wrote in a Sept. 20 letter to the Commission, obtained by POLITICO. “At least half of the Board should be composed of participants representing the farming world, and Copa and Cogeca … should be granted a stronger presence in comparison to other actors.” The group also called for the inclusion of bodies representing “livestock and crops sectorial organisations, inputs [and] agriculture machinery,” as well as a shift from the fast-paced, confidential and person-to-person talks towards a slower, more transparent, and organization-based format.  “What we really need to focus on is making it work for farmers because that, from my point of view, was the initial objective of the dialogue: it was a reaction to farmers’ protest,” said Jan Doležal, the president of the Czech AKČR agrarian chamber. Looking forward, “we’ll work to improve our negotiation position,” he told POLITICO. That’s going to be a problem as von der Leyen seeks to convert the conclusions of the dialogue into a “Vision” for the future of EU agriculture — one of several action plans she has promised to deliver within 100 days of her new Commission being sworn in. The 29-stakeholder dialogue sought to overcome the extreme polarization of von der Leyen’s first term, encouraging compromise and trust between a motley crew of agricultural associations, food manufacturers and retailers, environmentalists, academics, and financiers. Participants mostly came alone, ate together, and shared stories about themselves and their families. Stacking the EBAF with farmers will likely be seen as a unilateral power grab, breaking the tentative cease-fire and tipping Europe’s agri-food sector into turbulence once more. Likewise, converting the nimble talks into rigid meetings, where envoys run every suggestion through their bulky membership lists, will kill the goose that laid the golden egg.  Factor in grumpy European lawmakers and capitals, both upset at being excluded from the process, and the results of von der Leyen’s unorthodox farm talks could end up having a short shelf life. MEXICAN STANDOFF IN BRUSSELS Since its announcement in January, the Strategic Dialogue had ticked along nicely. With its members sworn to secrecy, it was hard to gauge how things were going, but everyone seemed reasonably satisfied. There were no major leaks and participants praised the constructive atmosphere and optimistic outlooks.   By late August, negotiations had entered the final phase and people started to sweat. The dialogue’s conclusions were meant to be unanimous and Peter Strohschneider, the German historian who moderated the debate, began to apply pressure to reluctant delegates. He told one group of holdouts that he would keep on chairing meetings for as long as it took, recalled one participant. When Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the conclusions of her Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture last month, it looked like a PR coup. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images When the 100-page report was published on Sept. 4, everyone scrambled to claim victory. NGOs trumpeted how it supported the EU’s recently-adopted nature restoration law. Consumer groups celebrated its food labeling and fair pricing sections. Young, organic and smallholder farmers highlighted the bits on reforming the EU farm budget, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Copa-Cogeca, the traditional behemoth of Brussels agri-food, struggled to sell it across the bloc though. “Really dangerous” is how Coldiretti, Italy’s largest farmer union, judged the recommendation for the CAP to prioritize smaller farmers. “I don’t like that at all,” said the head of the Dutch LTO on the need to decarbonize diets. Overall, the text “falls well short of expectations,” sniffed the president of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV). France’s FNSEA remained silent. Neither the organization nor its outspoken president, Arnaud Rousseau, posted a word about the report on its website or X account. That was despite the fact its former president is Christiane Lambert, one of the three Copa-Cogeca leaders who signed the conclusions and who uploaded a mass of posts about it on social media.  That week, most Copa member representatives were in Budapest for a farm conference. “This was our first chance to discuss it together,” said one participant, granted anonymity to speak freely. “There was unhappiness at part of it, particularly in relation to diets and consideration of alternative diets and plant proteins … anything essentially that would go against our position on livestock.” Two days after the report’s publication, four Copa members from the Visegrad countries — Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary — shot a highly critical letter at the secretariat. It demanded Copa-Cogeca retrospectively reject the report’s conclusions and withdraw from the Strategic Dialogue entirely.  “After 20 years of membership of the European Union and of the Copa-Cogeca family, we thought that our differences would be understood and safeguarded,” the four wrote in the letter obtained by POLITICO. “We expected the Copa-Cogeca Secretariat and Presidents to take a more cautious position and to insist on discussing the very sensitive and often controversial conclusions” with members, they complained: “The process was very non-transparent, especially in the last three days of the negotiations, when we had zero opportunity to intervene.” The group’s leadership tried to smooth things over. At the Copa presidium on Sept. 26, they assured unions the document was just a starting point. Some were assuaged. “I think people have accepted it with caveats, people are willing to move on,” said the participant present in Budapest.    Others were not. POLITICO spoke to one attendee who argued the lobby showed a lack of courage during the dialogue and its endorsement is not easily reversible. Von der Leyen wants the report to guide future legislation and has explicitly tasked her designated agriculture commissioner, Christophe Hansen, with following up on its proposals. WHAT HAPPENS NOW There’s disagreement over whether Copa-Cogeca could still withdraw from future talks. In a statement to POLITICO, the secretariat said that “the Strategic Dialogue is a report, not a legally binding agreement, so the question of a general withdrawal doesn’t apply.”  Both Doležal, the Czech farm boss, and the representative present in Budapest agreed with that idea, though for different reasons. Doležal, one of the four signatories of the Visegrad letter, told POLITICO that “I don’t think this will be on the table actually,” since Copa-Cogeca’s subsequent letter to the Commission has appeased him. The representative from Budapest was more pragmatic. “We’ve got a new secretary-general, Ellie Tsiforou: I don’t think it will be in her interests after her first couple of weeks … to announce that the farmers are” out, and risk immediately alienating von der Leyen, they reflected.  The dialogue’s conclusions were meant to be unanimous and Peter Strohschneider began to apply pressure to reluctant delegates. | Nicolas Tucat Not everyone got the memo though.  Any breach of the principle of consensus — such as signing a trade deal with South America or proposing a new pesticide reduction law — would mean trouble, warned José María Castilla, the head of Spain’s largest farmer union Asaja. “If [the EU] doesn’t comply with the agreement, we will be back on the streets,” he told POLITICO.