We have members in 21 countries across Europe. We bring our experience and knowledge from national and regional levels to European policy spaces through our membership and active participation in ECVC. We are the collective voice of European farmers, as all of the political work is done by us, as farmers and farmers’ organisations. Below you can find a list of our member organisations.

We are the European region of La Via Campesina. Along with nine other regions across the world, we form a global grassroots movement defending peasants' rights.

Our governance is based around the idea that social change is possible when right holders organise to reclaim and protect their rights. Our goal is to enable unified and coordinated actions by peasant farmer and agricultural worker organisations across Europe, to impact and reshape agricultural and food policies and protect and guarantee the rights of these actors as recognised by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.

Each region is organised differently, and in ECVC our main decision-making body is the ECVC General Assembly, in which each member organisation has one vote. During the General Assembly, we adopt the strategic guidelines of the organisation and the budget and select a board (the Coordinating Committee, known as the CC). The General Assembly meets at least once per year to ensure democratic participation of our membership.

ECVC member organisations play a crucial role in the governance structure—together, members of each organisation appoint the CC and engage within the Working Groups and Articulations.

The Coordinating Committee acts as the political and legal representative body of the organisations between each General Assembly, and is responsible for implementing the strategic guidelines of the organisation. The CC is composed of 10 peasant farmers, with an equal gender balance, who are nominated by member organisations and elected by the GA.

We have a secretariat, located in Brussels, which supports ECVC members and the CC to implement decisions and in the administrative and financial management of our organisation.

Our work is organised around specific Working Groups (WG). We also have three cross-cutting horizontal articulations which aim to foster the equitable representation of women and youth, and gender and sexual diversities.

In 1986, after five years of continuous efforts, the process to bring European farmers’ organisations together culminated in the creation of the Coordination Paysanne Européenne (CPE).

The idea that farmers should be partners, not competitors, inspired a group of progressive farmers’ organisations to work together, seeking alternatives to productivism. After much preparation, these organisation met in Madrid on 4 December 1986 and officially established the CPE, by signing a common declaration. The new platform sought to:

From its beginnings, the new coalition took on major issues such as the CAP and the 1986 Uruguay Round of the GATT, which in 1994 would lead to the creation of the WTO. The voice of European peasant farmers soon became part of the public debate on agricultural policies in the European institutions.

In 2008, the organisations which were part of the Coordination Paysanne Européenne merged with the COAG (Coordination of Farmer and Livestock Owner Organisations from Spain) and other farmers’ organisations to form our current organisation, European Coordination Via Campesina.

Based on its belief in the need for unity and solidarity between farmers from the global North and global South, the CPE played an important role in the creation of La Via Campesina. In 1993, the CPE co-organised the global peasant farmers’ conference in Mons, Belgium—the founding event that launched La Via Campesina (LVC). For the following 3 years, the CPE hosted LVC’s rotating secretariat.

We regularly collaborate on projects with other social movements, academics, NGOs, and other civil society actors working in the areas of agricultural policy, food sovereignty, agroecology, and many more topics. Below you can find out more about our current or recent projects.