BRUSSELS — The Danish farm minister is determined to spend some of his remaining political capital on the plight of millions of piglets rumbling across the continent packed into semitrucks.

The European Commission’s 2023 plan to ease the suffering of farm animals on the move started out as the ultimate feel-good proposal. But two years later, the ambition for stricter limits on travel times, more space in trucks and a ban on long journeys in extreme heat is stuck in the slow lane.

After years of farmer unrest and mounting pressure to boost Europe’s competitiveness, politicians have grown wary of new costs or constraints on industry. Across the bloc, social and environmental rules are being softened, delayed or quietly dropped. The animal transport reform, which would not only raise costs but upend much of Europe’s livestock trade, is now on a collision course with the deregulatory drive.

Few in Brussels believe it can be saved.

But Danish Agriculture Minister Jacob Jensen, now chairing capitals’ negotiations for a few more months, is determined to try.

Overdue update

Every year, around 1.6 billion farm animals, mainly pigs, cows and sheep, are loaded onto trucks and shipped across the EU for fattening or slaughter, in a trade worth some €8.6 billion for the livestock industry.

Animal welfare barely registered in EU politics two decades ago, when Brussels last updated its rules for livestock transport.

Yet amid recurring reports of animals collapsing from exhaustion or drowning in their own waste, the Commission floated more protections in December 2023.

Since then, they’ve been buried under thousands of amendments in the European Parliament. Romanian conservative Daniel Buda, one of the lead negotiators, has made arguments that flatly contradict scientific evidence, claiming that packing animals closer together makes them safer or that giving them more space would undermine the EU’s climate goals. In the Council of the EU, most governments would rather see the file disappear altogether.

Member countries have been at odds over how to handle transport in hot weather, the movement of young calves and — most explosively — journey time limits.

Copenhagen, which took over the rotating Council presidency in July, says it’s found a pragmatic way to keep the reform alive. Jensen, the farm minister, told POLITICO he sees “good progress” in technical negotiations, including on how animals are handled, watered and fed during transport, even as the journey time limits debate remains frozen.

“It’s not correct to say there’s no progress,” Jensen said in a telephone interview. “If the conditions are good, if animals have ventilation, water and trained handlers, it matters less whether it’s one or two hours longer.”

An unlikely champion

It’s a message that captures Denmark’s paradox. The Nordic country is one of Europe’s largest exporters of live animals, sending some 13 million piglets a year to other EU states.

Yet it has also been among the bloc’s loudest voices for tougher welfare rules, even calling for a full ban on live exports to third countries ahead of the Commission’s proposal. Now, isolated on that front, it is trying to salvage the weaker Commission draft by making it workable enough to pass.

That instinct for compromise isn’t new. Last year, Denmark became the first country to agree a tax on greenhouse gas emissions from farming — with farmers’ backing. For Jensen, who helped broker that deal, the lesson is that even the most sensitive agricultural reforms can stick if they’re built on pragmatism rather than punishment.

That balancing act has turned Denmark into the unlikely custodian of one of Europe’s most moral — and most toxic — legislative files. At home, hauliers call the reform “pure nonsense” and “detached from reality.” Farmers complain their standards already exceed those of many peers.

Yet Copenhagen hasn’t flinched, arguing that harmonized EU rules could finally level the playing field. “We need to find the right balance,” Jensen said. “It has to improve animal welfare, but it cannot be so burdensome that cross-border transport becomes impossible.”

The Commission’s draft would cap journeys for slaughter animals at nine hours, ban daytime travel during heat waves and tighten space allowances. Welfare advocates say even that falls short of what animal health research shows is needed to prevent suffering. But after years of stalemate, Denmark’s incrementalism may be the only path left.

Jensen insists that simply enforcing the bloc’s existing rules, as the reform’s critics propose, wouldn’t be enough to improve conditions for transported animals. “If this negotiation does not improve animal welfare,” he said, “there’s no need to have it at all.”

Whether his slow-and-steady strategy works will depend on how much patience Europe has left. The Parliament remains gridlocked and a new round of protests could easily bury the file again.

The reform is by no means “home safe,” Jensen admitted. Denmark just wants to “come as far as we can” before handing it off to Cyprus, which takes over the EU presidency in January and hasn’t exactly been among the vocal champions of tougher transport rules.

“Hopefully they can do the final job,” he said.

Lucia Mackenzie contributed to this report.