Brussels, 12/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - In a note to the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) on Tuesday 8 February, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia express concern at European Commission plans on revising marketing standards.
As part of the simplification of the common agricultural policy (CAP), the Commission adopted a draft regulation seeking to replace the current 15 texts on single common market organisation (COM) marketing standards merely in a delegated act and an implementing act. The result is a text extending to 108 pages not counting annexes.
In all, then, the regulation could be several hundred pages long and cover areas as different as wine, olive oil and hops, the seven states fear. They say that this merger of regulations could significantly complicate the work of experts and operators. The Commission argues, however, that some elements (definitions, checks, the reporting obligation, etc.) are common to all regardless of sector.
“We believe that the guiding principle of simplification should not be simply to reduce the number of legislative acts but to simplify the content, in particular so that such acts are easy to implement for administrations and easy to understand by users”, the seven member states say in their note. They call on the Commission to continue with the sector approach on regulation of marketing standards. They underline, too, that the revision of standards in the wine-making sector would be the most sensitive and most complicated of the simplification process. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)