In its capacity of an independent entity, the AEP has been asked to forward the legume community view to the European Commission Research Directorate-General.

Because they are source of renewable nitrogen and source of diversification, legumes appear to be necessary for sustainable farming systems in Europe.
Collaborations in legume research have now been well established both at trans-national and inter-disciplinary levels. The recent 6th European Grain Legume Conference in Lisbon (November 2007) afforded a timely opportunity to define and discuss a strategic vision for legume research that has AEP endorsement.
This vision is backed by the economic players, especially those from the grain legume sector who participated to a socio-economic assessment of these crops in EUROCROP.

Thanks to the concerted approach developed through the associative platform AEP and from which the EU Integrated Project named GLIP has emerged, a joint strategy among scientists, economic players and policy makers is now being defined in order to (i) facilitate progress in legume knowledge in several areas, and (ii) to tackle identified problems efficiently in order that legumes contribute to meet short, medium and long term environmental and health challenges.

This joint strategy, which aims to define priorities for R&D activities on legumes in short, medium and long terms, is based on:
- the analysis of future agricultural challenges and how legumes could clearly contribute;
- the assessment of legume research progress and the key scientific challenges;
- the analysis of socio-economic situation of legumes and related prospects for progress.

At the current stage of the definition of the legume strategy, some priorities are identified and the newly elected AEP delegates will develop further the formal Legume Vision Paper in 2008.