At the meeting of the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) on Monday 29 May, the Maltese Presidency of the Council failed to obtain the revised Council mandate on organic farming that it had hoped would facilitate agreement with the European Parliament (see EUROPE 11794).
The negotiations on organic farming are, then, once more at a standstill. The final inter-institutional trialogue on the review of organic farming rules, scheduled for Wednesday 31 May, has been cancelled. EU agriculture ministers will take stock of the situation at their meeting on 12 June. It would seem very difficult, however, for a new trialogue meeting to be organised before the end of the Maltese presidency on 30 June. The Commission is thought unwilling to withdraw its proposal. It would seem probable, therefore, that the issue will be handed over to the Estonian Presidency which takes office from 1 June.
A number of sources say that, at Monday’s SCA meeting, more than ten delegations expressed reservations or made comments on the Maltese Presidency’s compromise text which sought to offer a solution on the most controversial points of the proposal: unauthorised substances, databases and derogations, seeds (two new categories of seed specifically geared towards the organic market, heterogeneous biological material and organic varieties for organic production) and growing crops under glass (derogations for the northern countries). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)