Some Facts about the High-Level Group on Agro-food Competitiveness

Acting as a tool for competitiveness activities, the High Level Group's mandate is:

· to address those issues that determine and will determine the future competitiveness of the Community agro-food industry;

· to identify the factors influencing the competitive position and sustainability of the Community agro-food industry, including future challenges and trends likely to impact on competitiveness;

· to formulate a set of sector-specific recommendations addressed to policy makers at the Community level.

The legal basis [37 KB] for the High Level Group is the Commission Decision of 28 April 2008 setting up the High Level Group on the Competitiveness of the Agro-Food Industry (2008/359/EC) which was published in the Official Journal L 120/15 of 7 May 2008.

The Commission Decision setting up the High Level Group provides for a three-tier structure for this initiative, namely:

· the High Level Group which is deemed to address the issues that determine the future of the competitiveness of the agro-food industry and which will meet three times in total (12 June 2008, 12 December 2008 and spring 2009);

· the Sherpa sub-group, whose role is to prepare the discussions, position papers and to recommend actions and/or policy measures to the High Level Group;

· the working groups, whose scope is very much related to the specific characteristics of the agro-food industry and where the involvement of all the sectors - whether represented or not represented in the High Level Group - is encouraged, in order to create a bottom-up platform.

The 1st meeting of the High Level Group took place on 12 June 2008. The 2nd meeting of the High Level Group took place on 17th March 2009 and had as its main objective the endorsement of the 30 recommendations and the accompanying Report. In the Follow-up meeting of the High Level Group on 6th July 2009, the members approved the Roadmap of Key Initiatives, which contains actions intended to implement the 30 recommendations.

The work of the working groups was developed under the following work streams between July and September 2008 :

· I. Access to raw materials and trade issues

· II. Food chain structure

· III. Regulatory environment

A wrap-up session for each of the work streams took place in September 2008.