500 workers from across Europe rally in Brussels to support fair work in European Agriculture and save the only rule in the CAP that protects farm workers and ensures the ethical use of EU taxpayer money.
Brussels, 3 November 2026: About 500 agricultural workers and trade unionists gathered today at Place Jean Rey in Brussels to send a clear message to EU decision-makers: Social Conditionality is not up for negotiation. Delegations came from every corner of Europe for the rally “Hands off Social Conditionality! For Fair Work in European Agriculture.”
The rally came a week after the AgriFish Council adopted its Partial General Approach, the Council’s negotiating position ahead of talks with the Parliament, on the post-2027 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The text leaves out Social Conditionality, the only EU mechanism linking CAP payments to employers’ compliance with labour rights. A mechanism that has applied across the vast majority of Member States for only for a few months but is already threatened under false and misleading arguments.
“Public money should never subsidise the violation of workers’ rights, and that is what Member States seem not to grasp” said Enrico Somaglia, EFFAT General Secretary. “They decided to scrap Social Conditionality last week, well before the Commission could release a real assessment expected in 2027. Today’s turnout shows that workers from all over Europe have no intention of giving up on it. Social Conditionality is essential because it can meaningfully improve labour standards in one of the most precarious sectors of the economy.”
Agriculture is a sector plagued by precarity. A sector where one third of all work is either undeclared or partially declared, six times the average across the wider labour market. A sector where, across Europe, 500 people still die at work every year.
Social Conditionality protects vulnerable workers, many of them migrant and seasonal, and it protects responsible employers from being undercut.
From the streets to the Parliament
After the rally, EFFAT and its affiliates took part in a hearing at the European Parliament, “Promoting Fair Work in European Agriculture,” organised by MEPs Camilla Laureti (S&D) and Tom Waitz (Greens/EFA).
At the hearing, Enrico Somaglia said: “We urge MEPs to support a strong parliamentary negotiating mandate to preserve and strengthen Social Conditionality, opposing any attempt to weaken or remove it, and to defend it when trilogue starts. Social Conditionality is a principle of fairness that must be protected. Its deletion would be a major political mistake: a clear attack in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, against more than 12 million farm workers that work hard every day to ensure food is available on our table.”
Next steps
Parliament is expected to adopt its position in January and then open negotiations with the Council. EFFAT will keep engaging MEPs, the Commission and national governments to strengthen the CAP’s social dimension and safeguard a robust Social Conditionality in the final text.
#SaveSocialConditionality
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