DISINFO: EU only interested in meat prices, not poverty, unemployment or terrorism
SUMMARY
The EU has found a new enemy at last. Now all the forces in Brussels will pull all efforts to fight meat. Of course, it is a more important problem in Europe than poverty, unemployment, crime and even terrorism.
RESPONSE
The statement is untrue and aims at portraying EU as a country not caring about important social or political issues.
The disinformation message appeared in the background of a recently published report by the True Animal Protein Price Coalition, which was presented at the beginning of February in the European Parliament. The report urges the EU to adopt a meat tax to tackle climate emergency. Many European lawmakers backed the report calling for a new meat pricing model to be included in the European Green Deal and the EU’s new food policy, the Farm to Fork Strategy. The proposal, however, is still on the discussion stage.
Poverty reduction is a key policy component of the Europe 2020 strategy for growth and jobs. As statistics show, the number of people at poverty or social inclusion is constantly decreasing since 2012. 2020 goal for the EU is to reach 96.1 million. In the period between 2002 and 2018, the unemployment rate for the total population aged 15-74 decreased by 2.2 percentage points (p.p.) in the, back then, EU-28, from 9.0 % to 6.8 %.
As for terrorism, the EU has adopted an EU counter-terrorism strategy back in 2005. EU considers terrorism as one of the main threats to its freedom and security. Following the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, the Commission established European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) to improve the exchange of information and the operational support to Member States' investigators. The Commission also runs Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN). The key focus goes on countering the financing of terrorism, protection of critical infrastructure, security research projects, etc. See more on EU counter-terrorism efforts here.