On 18 September 2025, Petr Havlik (IIASA) presented the perspective paper prepared jointly by the Horizon Europe projects ACT4CAP27, BrightSpace, and LAMASUS, “Sustainable agricultural sector: A key component of EU economic prosperity and security” at the 35th Annual Conference of the Austrian Society of Agricultural Economics (ÖGA) in Graz, Austria.
The conference theme – “Security of Supply in the Context of Rising Demand and Limited Resources” – provided a timely backdrop for Petr’s plenary keynote on the central role of agriculture in Europe’s long-term economic stability and strategic resilience.
In his presentation Petr emphasized that Europe’s agricultural sector is not only essential for food and supply security, but also for advancing climate mitigation, biodiversity protection, and competitiveness in the global bioeconomy. He argued that strategic investments in innovation, sustainability, and resilience will determine whether the EU can successfully balance rising global demand with finite resources such as land, water, and labour.
The contribution also gains special relevance in light of the one-year anniversary of the Draghi Report on EU competitiveness, which inspired our group in developing this analysis. The Draghi Report called for a stronger alignment between Europe’s competitiveness, sustainability, and security agendas – a vision that is echoed in our perspective paper for treating agriculture as a cornerstone of Europe’s economic prosperity and strategic autonomy.
For BrightSpace, the joint perspective paper builds on our mission to explore pathways toward the Safe and Just Operating Space in EU agriculture, entailing sustainable, resource-efficient farming systems while ensuring food and nutrition security.
Read the perspective paper:
Sustainable agricultural sector: A key component of EU economic prosperity and security (pdf on Zenodo)
Source: IIASA
