The new Bioeconomy Strategy released today by the European Commission lacks the ambition needed to align Europe’s resource use with the ecological boundaries of our planet.

While focusing on scattered product innovation efforts instead of tackling the root causes of nature, pollution, and climate crises, the Commission has missed a crucial opportunity, warns the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) – Europe’s largest network of environmental citizens’ organisations.

Eva Bille, Head of Circular Economy at the EEB, said:

“Instead of setting a strategy that confronts Europe’s excessive demand for resources, the Commission clings to the illusion that we can simply replace our current consumption with bio-based inputs, overlooking the serious and immediate harm this will inflict on people and nature.”

Compared to an earlier version leaked in October, the Bioeconomy Strategy does not acknowledge the need to drastically reduce pressure on ecosystems. This is a crucial omission, given that the EU’s unsustainable production and consumption are already massively overshooting ecological boundaries and putting people, nature and businesses at risk.

While the Strategy proposes action to map the available biomass, it falls short of setting standards and methodologies for responsible use and non-use, or defining what uses of biomass are genuinely most valuable to society. Instead, it focuses on investments, scale-up, demand creation, and global partnerships.

The proposal fails to prioritise material uses of biomass – which are more sustainable and resource efficient – over its use for energy. It also fails to phase out subsidies, state aid, and other support schemes for bioenergy. This is a major missed opportunity to correct years of misguided policies that have rewarded inefficient, carbon-intensive, and polluting uses of biomass, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that such incentives have contributed to worsening the climate crisis, eroding forests’ ability to absorb carbon, distorting wood markets, and undermining  long-term food security.

In addition, the Bioeconomy Strategy keeps the door open to increased biomass imports. It claims that the EU is largely self-sufficient in its biomass supply, disregarding the fact that the EU’s animal farming sector is more than 70% dependent on imported feed to sustain current level of overproduction. The EEB warns this approach risks further entrenching unsustainable food and feed patterns.

Finally, the proposal does not provide meaningful incentives for sustainable land management practices, such as closer-to-nature forestry, agroecology, and organic farming – approaches that can help meet the growing market demand for ecologically sourced products, the EEB notes.

The first legislative proposals under the Bioeconomy Strategy are already expected for Q1 2026, with additional measures planned through to 2030.