A key event in the world of fruit and vegetable producer organizations in Europe, find the summary of AREFLH's participation to ICOP 2025.

The International Congress of Producer Organisations (ICOP) was held from 19 to 21 November 2025 in Inárcs near Budapest, Hungary.

Lisa Martini, President of the AREFLH Producers' College, and Michele Gentile, policy officer, attended the event.

Among the various speakers at the congress, Kristine Bori from the European Commission (DG Agri) presented the new financing mechanism for sectoral aid in the fruit and vegetable sector under the next CAP.

Lisa Martini, as a representative of the producers, then outlined AREFLH's position on climate challenges and rising costs, particularly labour costs. She emphasised that the association remains fully available to cooperate with European institutions in order to design the next CAP in such a way as to ensure that fruit and vegetable producers can continue to play their part in ensuring Europe's food sovereignty.

This was followed by a round table discussion with Wolfgang Braunstein (AMC Austria/GFA) as moderator, Kristine Bori, Michele Gentile, Peter Kelemen (Hungarian PO FruitVeB) and Maarten De Moor (LAVA).

Firstly, the production representatives called for greater clarity and transparency from the European Commission, pointing out that a common policy requires a truly common budget. For his part, Mr Kelemen stressed that, for Central and Eastern Europe, renationalisation does not necessarily constitute a risk, as it could enable Member States to stimulate aggregation in a sector that is still a minority in these countries.

Michele Gentile pointed out that aggregation must be strengthened at European level, with a minimum of common rules, and that this remains possible even within the proposed regulatory framework, provided that the most problematic elements for the planning capacity of POs are thoroughly corrected.

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