Brussels, 11/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - Debate within the Council on organic agriculture looks likely to be complex and tense with a number of issues dividing the countries of the EU, as witnessed by the discussions among EU experts on Monday 9 March.
The questionnaire that the Latvian Presidency of the Council of Ministers plans to put to European agriculture ministers on Monday 16 March covers unauthorised substances (Article 20), the import regime (Article 31) and monitoring - issues that reveal disagreements among the member states. In its 2015 work programme, the Commission has indicated it will withdraw the text on organic farming if no agreement is reached in the six months of the Latvian Presidency.
The meeting of the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) on Monday 9 March was dominated by further debate on the proposal on organic agriculture, ranging over: the scope (Article 2 and Annex I); - unauthorised substances; - imports; - and monitoring (Article 44).
Scope. Several countries, including France, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Hungary, Slovenia and Luxembourg, were prepared to accept delegating to the Commission the power to amend the list of products covered by the regulation. Others, however, such as Germany, Austria, Finland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, took the view that any such amendment should be made through the co-decision procedure, arguing that this is a key component which cannot be delegated to the Commission.
Unauthorised substances (pesticides). The positions taken last week in the SCA remain more or less unchanged (see EUROPE 11268): the issue will be settled by the ministers on Monday 16 March. Many delegations made reference to the UK position which would see an investigation carried out in any case of contamination of an organic product; this would allow an organic product to be labelled as such and so contain unauthorised substances, if these are inevitable.
Some countries (Germany, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, Slovakia, et al) opposed setting a threshold (and thus any automatic “decertification” of organic products) on the basis of the UK proposal. Taking an opposite view, other countries, including Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria and also the Commission felt that a threshold was necessary and that a product containing banned substances could not be labelled organic. Some countries, such as Finland and Ireland, said that a harmonised approach was important and suggested that the UK proposal could form the basis for such an approach.
Imports. The Commission set out in detail the reasons why it had opted for a compliance regime rather than the current equivalence regime. Some countries, such as Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, repeated their preference for retention of the equivalence regime in order to avoid both disruption of supply and the difficulties that developing countries might face in selling their organic products in the EU.
The Latvian Presidency suggestion of a five-year transition period for the change from the equivalence to the compliance regime seemed to have been backed by some countries (Germany and Austria in particular) which are not very keen on the Commission proposal. Others, including Italy, Spain, Finland and the Czech Republic, said they supported the Commission position and argued for a compliance regime in order to avoid discrimination between EU organic producers and third-country producers.
Monitoring. Two camps continue to oppose one another: on the one hand, countries such as France, Germany, Romania, Denmark, Poland and the Czech Republic, which would like to see the continuation of compulsory annual checks (with possible further checks depending on risk analysis) and, on the other, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and more which support a tough risk analysis, as proposed by the Commission. (Lionel Changeur)