Italy and Spain could complicate Ireland’s bid for a UN seat

Phil Hogan’s campaign to lead the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation is running into stiff resistance at a pivotal moment.

Ireland’s former EU commissioner is still regarded in Brussels as the standout contender to become the first European to serve as director-general of the Rome-based agency in half a century.

But efforts to unite the bloc behind one name have been slowed by determined rival candidacies from Italy and Spain.

If no common nominee emerges, Europe again risks splitting its vote when 193 UN member states choose the next director-general in July 2027.

Tensions between the US and Iran in the strait have raised risks for fertiliser supply chains

There is also unease within the EU over claims that the FAO has been “weaponised” in ways that undermine sanctions imposed on Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Current director-general Qu Dongyu is due to step down next year after completing a second four-year term, a tenure marked by accusations that the former Chinese vice minister for agriculture steered the organisation in ways that suited Beijing’s geopolitical agenda.

During a lunch on 23 February, EU agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen called on farm ministers to “consolidat[e] our support behind a single candidate”, according to speaking notes seen by RTÉ News.

In a pointed reference to possible Chinese and Russian influence, he said control of the FAO was “crucial”, adding that “the concerns [over] the current top leadership are widely shared, as sometimes the organisation appears to be instrumentalised to specific interests. We are also concerned at attempts to instrumentalise FAO against Western sanctions on Russia in the context of food security”.

The FAO was founded by the United Nations in 1945 with a mandate to combat hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity.

Its 2025 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the world report found that as many as 720 million people are chronically food insecure, while 43 million children are suffering the most severe form of malnutrition.

For the EU, the issue has become even more pressing as the Trump administration cuts funding to multilateral institutions and dismantles USAID, a move that The Lancet has said could contribute to 14 million premature deaths over the next five years.

Against that backdrop, Hogan is viewed in Brussels as a formidable contender.

Phil Hogan is seen in Brussels as a strong candidate (file pic)

After resigning from the European Commission in September 2020, he set up Hogan Associates, a successful Brussels lobbying firm whose clients included JP Morgan Chase, DLA Piper, Enfer Labs and Vodafone, with turnover in 2024 topping €1 million, according to the EU’s transparency register.

People close to him had previously played down suggestions he would seek a UN post, arguing he was unlikely to walk away from a lucrative lobbying business in Brussels.

Hogan himself privately dampened such speculation last November.

Yet the role appears to have been on his radar for some time. In May last year, he was seen networking at a Brussels conference on the Agroecological Transition of Food Systems in Africa, an issue that sat awkwardly alongside his corporate lobbying portfolio.

Then, in early January, Manfred Webber MEP, president of the European People’s Party (EPP), to which Fine Gael belongs, privately signalled that the party would back a Hogan candidacy for the FAO’s top job.

At that informal Brussels lunch on 23 February, agriculture ministers unanimously agreed that a process should begin to identify a single EU candidate.

It is understood that Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon raised Hogan’s name at the meeting, though the Government did not formally submit his candidacy until 3 March.

Competing bids soon followed. Rome put forward Maurizio Martina, a former Italian agriculture minister who now serves as one of the FAO’s deputy director-generals, while on 16 March Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez nominated his long-serving agriculture minister Luis Planas.

Sources say the Cyprus presidency of the EU, which is overseeing the process, has until 25 May to decide whether the issue can go to a secret indicative vote among EU agriculture ministers, with the aim of naming a common candidate at a meeting in Luxembourg on 22 June.

The Cyprus presidency has confirmed that no European candidate has yet secured backing from national capitals, leaving the 22 June target increasingly doubtful.

“It doesn’t look as though there will be an agreed European candidate by the end of the Cyprus presidency, unless there’s a rush of blood to the head sometime in June,” said a senior EU source.

Some officials suspect Cyprus, under pressure from Italy, has moved slowly in trying to produce an agreed EU nominee, an allegation a presidency source firmly rejects.

If agriculture ministers fail to settle the issue by June, it could be escalated to foreign ministers, who are due to meet in Luxembourg on 15 June.

France has told the Irish Government it backs Hogan, and the Baltic states are also understood to be supportive.

Sources close to the former Fine Gael minister say every EU prime minister from the EPP family – now 14 in total, including incoming Hungarian prime minister Peter Magyar – will support his bid.

How much pressure Italy or Spain comes under to stand aside may depend on how strategically the EU views the FAO post.

But because the process is not anchored in EU treaties and is instead driven by UN member states, both Rome and Madrid are free to hold their ground if they believe they have a viable path.

“It’s more of an informal understanding that there will be an agreed EU candidate, and that everyone will get behind that agreed candidate,” said one source familiar with the process.

“But there’s no obligation on anyone to do that. The FAO [election] is an independent process, and any country can put forward a candidate.”

‘I think everybody knows he is the one with the better chance’

“My reading is that Spain and Italy are not minded to pull out and give Hogan a clear run,” said a senior EU source, “even though I think everybody knows he is the one with the better chance of the three in terms of his experience”.

If no single candidate is agreed before the Cyprus presidency ends, Dublin could face an awkward balancing act when it takes over the presidency on 1 July. The Government would be expected to advance Hogan’s candidacy while also serving as a neutral chair in the agriculture council, which represents the EU’s 27 farm ministers.

Ireland will assume the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from Cyprus in July

There may also be strategic calculations behind the Italian and Spanish campaigns.

Under long-standing convention, the host country of a UN agency does not usually put forward a candidate to lead that same body. In that context, Maurizio Martina’s candidacy may be aimed at ensuring that, if he falls short, he retains the deputy director-general post as a consolation.

Martina, who comes from the opposition Democratic Party, has received strong backing from centre-right foreign minister Antonio Tajani, an unusual cross-party endorsement in Italy’s deeply tribal political culture.

Spain, meanwhile, may be promoting Luis Planas in part to help preserve the position of Alvaro Lario, another former Spanish official who is director-general of the International Fund of Agriculture Development, another UN agency. His term expires in March next year, and a Planas withdrawal could smooth the way for Lario to secure a second term.

Unlike Hogan or Martina, Planas also has the advantage of regularly sitting around the table with fellow EU agriculture ministers, giving him direct access for lobbying.

Luis Planas, Spain’s Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

At the most recent ministerial meeting, he circulated a brochure describing himself as “committed to building consensus and making every voice count”, and said he would run the FAO in an “efficient manner to effectively serve its core purpose of eradicating hunger and malnutrition”.

Madrid, a major voluntary donor to the FAO, may therefore judge that its candidate remains competitive even if Ireland and Italy both stay in the race.

“Spain will be a strong candidate”, said one source familiar with the election process, “especially considering that Planas is the longest standing minister of agriculture in the EU.

“Spain also has strong soft power, not just in Latin America. Given all the positions they’ve been taking towards the US and Israel on Palestine and Iran, that would definitely get their candidate support from the Global South. It could be said about Ireland too, but Spain has been very active in FAO for many years.”

Ireland, for its part, is expected to make its own case on food security. In June 2024, outgoing director-general Qu Dongyu presented President Michael D Higgins with the FAO’s Agricola Medal in recognition of his commitment to global food security, poverty reduction and sustainable development.

Irish officials have also risen to senior positions inside the organisation. Charles Spillane, professor of plant science at the University of Galway, was appointed FAO chief scientist in December, the highest-ranking role ever held by an Irish person in the body’s 80-year history.

In 2024, Irish microbiologist Sarah Cahill became secretary of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the FAO body responsible for global food standards and codes of practice designed to protect consumer health and support fair food trade.

When announcing Hogan’s candidacy, the Government pointed to its “strengthened” engagement on food security, nutrition, agriculture and humanitarian support across the UN system, including “enhanced cooperation… with the FAO and the World Food Programme, two key UN organisations in the field of agriculture, food security and emergency food assistance”.

Sources in Rome familiar with the race say Hogan’s 2020 departure as EU trade commissioner after the Golfgate controversy is unlikely to damage him internationally.

“In Ireland it was a scandal, but in other countries it may not have meant that much. Every country is different,” said one source. “Ireland enjoys soft power in FAO, it has an aura.”

EU officials say the stakes are high and argue that, after 50 years, it is firmly in Europe’s interest to rally behind a strong joint candidate.

“The effort is there for the EU to coordinate since it’s always stronger if there’s one clear candidate,” said one senior official. “That’s how you get these [UN] jobs. If you look at how the Chinese do it, they put people in at all levels.”

Hogan brings a political CV that neatly fits the FAO brief: he is a former environment minister, and a former EU commissioner for both agriculture and trade.

Since his nomination was confirmed, he has met officials and political figures across most EU capitals and attended key FAO regional gatherings in Brazil, Mauritania and Rome. He is due to attend the FAO’s European regional conference in Tajikistan on 15 May.

He is also understood to be in regular contact with current and former Trump administration figures, including officials he dealt with during his time as EU trade commissioner.

Paul Kiernan, a former Irish deputy permanent representative to the UN food agencies in Rome, is helping to coordinate Hogan’s campaign, while the Government continues to press his case.

Cypriot agriculture minister Maria Panayiotou met Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon in Luxembourg on 27 April to discuss the matter, and has separately held talks in recent weeks with her Italian counterpart Francesco Lollobrigida and with Spanish candidate Luis Planas.

Minister Maria Panayiotou and Minister Martin Heydon (file pic)

The Cyprus presidency says it is still working to secure a unified European nominee.

“It remains of strategic importance for the European Union to move towards a unified approach for the FAO Director General position in 2027, with the objective of [the first] successful candidature of an EU FAO Director General in over 50 years,” said a Cyprus presidency spokesperson.

“Cyprus continues its efforts as an honest broker, including bilateral consultations, to facilitate coordination.

“In view of the EU’s leading role and contributions to FAO amid growing geopolitical and food security challenges, the presidency underlines the value of timely preparation and strategic coherence to strengthen EU–FAO cooperation and promote the Union’s priorities globally.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine said: “At the Informal [ministerial] lunch on 23 February, there was unanimous agreement amongst member states that a single unified EU candidate be identified for the post of FAO Director General for election at [the] FAO Conference in 2027.

“It was also unanimously agreed that the Cyprus Presidency undertake a process of bilateral discussions and outreach in an effort to identify a preferred EU candidate.

“Ireland fully supports this process which is still ongoing and thanks Cyprus for their leadership on this matter.”

Whether EU capitals can yet coalesce around a single contender for the €200,000-a-year director-general role remains uncertain.

Food security has seldom sat so squarely at the centre of geopolitics, and Hogan is understood to have argued on the campaign trail that the FAO must take a political lead in preventing a hunger crisis next year that could be triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

If that argument lands and carries him to the FAO’s Rome headquarters in the summer of 2027, it would mark a striking political comeback for the 66-year-old – and not his first.