Brussels, 29/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission will on Friday 30 March propose to make agricultural product promotion measures and information provision, which are jointly financed by the EU, more consistent and effective. The Commission will pledge to bring forward a legislative proposal before the end of this year and says that initiatives to boost local markets and local sourcing of demand will be covered by rural development schemes and will not form part of the promotion regime in future. In its communication, the Commission remains somewhat evasive when it comes to funding.
The communication, on “Promotion measures and information provision for agricultural products: a reinforced value-added European strategy for promoting the tastes of Europe”, will propose: - promotion measures and information provision which better target markets and products or messages to be communicated (for example, products with high added value), taking into account free-trade agreement negotiations and the markets where highest growth is expected, and thereby avoiding spreading resources too thinly and trying to do too much with the resources available; - more appealing campaigns, preceded, if necessary, by market analyses, studies of consumer habits and pilot campaigns; - a review of the way programmes are selected, with the design and how they are implemented having to be more flexible so that changes can be made even during the course of a campaign; - a common identity for the various promotion measures, including visual and content elements, whatever the scheme being considered; - assessment of the place to be given to private companies when they propose schemes that are of high added value for the EU; - a single consistent list of products eligible for measures on both domestic and international markets; - enhanced support for the promotion of European quality systems (PDO, PGI and traditional speciality guaranteed); - retention of the option of headlining where PDO and PGI products come from; - for internal market measures, the option of indicating the national origin of a product as a sub-heading (not as a headline, as that could be seen as being equivalent to placing quantitative restrictions on intra-Community trade); - on foreign markets, the option of indicating the country the product comes from (as a sub-heading to reference to the European origin of the product); - the option, on foreign markets, of conducting joint campaigns comprising a generic section and a trade section where individual private brands could be presented; - technical support to help traders take part in jointly funded programmes.
The Commission says in its communication that the success of European agriculture will depend on its ability to increase its market shares at a time when markets are changing ever more quickly. It argues that supply must adapt to a demand that may change dramatically in a very short space of time. The horizontal promotion system, which has been in place since 2000 exists alongside other measures which are part of the common agricultural policy (CAP) in the common organisation of the market - CMO - (wine sector for export outside the EU, fruit and vegetables through producer organisations' operational programmes) and as part of rural development - whence, the Commission argues, a certain lack of consistency.
The communication will also highlight that the political question that has to be answered is whether the responses to be delivered at Community level in the event of crisis should come from the new promotion policy or whether they could come from the horizontal measures already in the proposals for the CAP until 2020.
Under the first pillar of the CAP, promotion measures are funded essentially through the horizontal system (€47 million spent in 2011, €55.2 million expected in 2012), the wine CMO (€112 million in 2011, €228 million expected in 2012) and the fruit and vegetable CMO (an average of €34 million in 2008-2009). (LC/transl.rt)