The EU is on course to adopt ‘welfare standards’ for fur farming. Betraying animals, citizens, and… itself.

So, what happened?

The 2024 elections may have had something to do with it. Now in charge of the file: a commissioner who stems from a far-right party (we’re not fully getting rid of Orban’s Fidesz just yet) and one of the five (!) Member States where fur farming is still permitted. Coincidence? We’ll let the facts speak.

In August of 2025 – the new Commission’s first year in office -the chairman of the Finnish Fur Breeders’ Association was quoted saying “From Brussels, there has been a clear message that they will not ban an industry at EU level,..”. A month later the Commission was holding workshops with the Fur industry to develop ‘welfare standards’ and ways for them ‘to adapt while maintaining economic viability’. The standards under consideration? Fully based on cage systems, completely disregarding EFSA’s findings. Remember that scientific evidence the Commission had themselves requested, and indicated it needed to make an assessment?

When the draft Commission Communication was leaked earlier this year, ‘welfare standards’ were no longer a bad dream one could eventually wake up from. They were turning into reality, with the Commission intending to adopt a legislative proposal by the end of 2027.

Internal logic? Completely thrown out of the window. A few examples: the Commission admits the industry employs a mere 2000 FTE’s across the Union and has declined by 75% over the last decade – yet argues that demand will continue in the next decades. The Commission supposedly also supports a One Health approach, focused on preventing and responding to zoonoses, while apparently forgetting that the last global pandemic was caused by one. While many of us thought life couldn’t get worse than being confined between the four walls of our apartments, mink on fur farms – permanently confined in small wire mesh cages – were getting infected by the virus too and killed by the millions. SANTE seems to have similarly forgotten that, just last July, DG Environment added American Mink – the main species still farmed forfur- tothelist of Invasive Alien Species of Union concern. At the same time, it proposes to regulate long-term ‘welfare standards’ for a species that EU biodiversity law says must be prevented, detected, and ultimately eradicated. How’s this for simplification, cutting red tape or any other post-2024 buzz word?

Doing the maths, that leaves us with Brussel’s favourite villain: the Commission itself. Internal divisions on the file have long been exposed and seem to be the very reason the Commission missed its self-imposed March deadline to communicate their final decision. A good reminder that we shouldn’t always lump the institution together as one big bad bogeyman? Or eventually just another dossier experiencing internal haggling until it’s deemed not important enough to spend political capital on? 6 million animals and 1.5 million citizens on one side of the scale, a shrinking industry on the other. Trying to keep it alive is an odd hill to die on for a Union with democracy among its foundational values. Its flagship instrument of participatory democracy? That would have to be declared dead. As dead as those millions of animals.

Eva Lauwens is EU Affairs Specialist at FOUR PAWS