Brussels, 11/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 11 May in Brussels, EU Agriculture Ministers held some bitterly fought negotiations in an attempt to reach a general approach on the organic farming dossier, but no agreement could be found in the end. Given the complexity of the dossier, the plausible option is to postpone the final negotiations at the Council until 16 June.
After an initial exchange of views on Monday morning at the Agriculture Council, the Latvian Presidency was quick to observe the absence of a qualified majority in favour of the compromise text on the table. A working dinner at the Agriculture Council on this organic farming dossier helped encourage the Presidency to present a new compromise text that focuses on a number of controversial control-related subjects (frequency of inspections) and those focusing on pesticide or herbicide residues in organic products.
During the first discussions on the Latvian Presidency compromise position, Austria said that it was in favour of concluding the dossier in June, so that they would have time to obtain the report from Parliament. Poland also said that it would be preferable to finalise in June. Germany said that there was still a lot of work to do on the text and Belgium suggested postponing the debates until June.
Non-authorised substances. On the presence of non-authorised substances in certified organic products, one group of member states was unwilling to accept that products from organic farming containing banned phytosanitary molecules could be marketed as organic products. This is the case for Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, the Czech Republic and Belgium. These countries therefore support the initial European Commission proposal to introduce a threshold for these products, above which, they would lose their certification. Option 2 proposed by the Latvian Presidency contains these thresholds (with criteria for determining the loss of certification).
A larger group of countries, however: Poland, France, Finland, Croatia, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Slovenia, Malta, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands etc. argues for the removal of any threshold suggestion and would initially prefer implementation of harmonised rules for detecting non-authorised substances that could, if necessary, lead to the carrying out of an investigation in this connection. These countries believe that product certification should not be removed if the producer is not responsible for the contamination. These countries therefore prefer Option 1 (investigations would be opened if pesticide were discovered, products would be considered as non-organic if contaminated, Commission report before the 31st of December 2021 on the presence of non-authorised products or substances).
Controls. There is just as much division on the question of inspections, with those calling for annual visits to be maintained (Germany, Austria, France, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Portugal, Belgium and Greece) and those (Poland, Ireland, Sweden, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Spain, Estonia and Croatia) defending the Commission proposal to move towards a risk analysis based system. The Latvian Presidency suggested compulsory controls every two years, combined with a risk assessment based mechanism (a new text submitted in the afternoon argued for compulsory inspections every three years). (Lionel Changeur)