Brussels, 10/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - The results of the Fitness Check of the EU General Food law currently being undertaken by the European Commission will be presented in the first quarter of 2016.
Ladislav Miko, the deputy director general of the European Commission's DG Health, announced this news on Tuesday 10 November to MEPs at the EP Environment, Health and Food Safety Committee, chaired by Giovanni La Via (EPP, Italy).
The first exchange of views on this examination carried out by the Commission as part of the REFIT programme to introduce “better legislation” led to a debate based on Regulation 178/2002 of the legislation that set up the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). This is a cornerstone of the initiative because it defines the general principles, requirements and aims of food legislation.
Miko emphasised that “European legislation is very often criticised because it is too expensive, complex, unclear and difficult to implement”. This is why they need to move forward to a “comprehensive assessment of the policy to establish whether the framework complies to the objective and identify obsolete measures and shortcomings” in food legislation. This will require an assessment of the efficiency, effectiveness, relevance, coherence and added European value.
The fitness check focuses on three areas: the general part on food safety; the provisions involving the EU rapid alert system for food and feed portal (RAFFS) and the crisis management system. DG Health commissioned studies into these three aspects, which will be finalised and take into consideration all the other elements from the assessment, explained Miko, who also announced that a “work document” would be ready in the first quarter of 2016.
The major trends in this health check, of which MEPs have managed to obtain an initial look, highlight the fact that improved coordination by the European Commission will be necessary. The EFSA system is “functioning well” but there are areas that could be improved involving the internal processes for managing dossiers because the time factor is impeding innovation; EFSA also has too few resources because there are not many experts and they spend little time there; EFSA's independence has also sometimes been subject to criticism.
During the debate, several MEPs regretted that the Commission had not imposed mandatory labelling on the origins of meat in ready-made meals and that trans-fats banned in the US are still allowed in the EU. According to Françoise Grossetête (EPP, France), EFSA is overloaded by the missionss incumbent on it, “which are not part of its DNA like health allegations”. Miko informed her that this was not in fact the problem and that “EFSA has to manage more than 500 assessments a year, with 500 people and 10 scientific committees. It has therefore, obtained excellent results. The legal architecture is good. It has sufficient personnel”. Nonetheless, he does believe that there are two problems: 1) we want excellent scientists but at the same time these should not be in contact with the major corporations, “moreover, the most eminent of the scientists are still involved in cutting edge company projects”; 2) cooperation with the member states: EFSA does not appoint the experts but must choose from the different candidates for the posts.
Gilles Pargneaux (S&D, France) believes that the European Commission is not showing enough initiative in its response to the wishes of consumers to be better protected and that given the increasing number of food scandals, there is a need to regulate, “so that the Mafia cannot rest easy”. Renate Sommer (EPP, Germany), however, thought that consumers were well protected but that having to wait until the first quarter of 2016 for fitness check results and to revise legislation then, “is much too late”. Martin Häusling (Greens/, EFA, Germany) said that the fact that the number of food-related diseases had not declined “is not necessarily a control problem but a lack of transparency in the food chain due to an absence of reporting and monitoring statements from operators”. He said that he did not agree that every year the Commission should draw up a report on the residues from pesticides contained in foodstuffs but without having changed direction on this issue. Mireille D'Ornano (ENF, France) said that the harmonisation of legislation, presented as a “security benchmark is not necessarily one given local specificities”.
Without wishing to enter into the debate on specific legislation, the Commission representative explained that many of the problems raised by the MEPs could be solved if EU legislation was correctly implemented and that the draft regulation on official controls would help fine-tune the mechanism for tackling fraud. The fitness check currently being carried out was launched in April 2014. Between November 2011 and July 2013, it was preceded by a pilot project. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)