Together with the European Landowners’ Association (ELO), the European Nurserystock Association (ENA) and the German Horticultural Association (ZVG), Copa and Cogeca expressed concerns on Thursday 22 June following the vote in the EU Invasive Alien Species (IAS) Committee which added 12 new species to the European list of invasive species, warning that the socio-economic impact had not been properly assessed.
The EU regulation on invasive alien species aims to protect biodiversity and ecosystems, and to minimise and mitigate the impact on human health and the economy that invasive alien species can have.
It includes three types of actions: prevention, early detection and rapid eradication and management. The IAS committee added 12 new species to the EU IAS list that was adopted in July 2016. Among these new additions, three species are of socio-economic importance to the horticulture sector: Asclepias syriaca (Common milkweed); Gunnera tinctoria (Chilean rhubarb); Pennisetum setaceum (Crimson fountaingrass).
Josep M. Pagès, ENA Secretary General called on the Commission to make a distinction between invasive alien species and their sterile varieties. Ornamental plant breeders have used a number of methods to develop sterile varieties, with low or no effective reproductive and dispersal mechanisms, that can therefore not become invasive as defined under Article 3 (2) of the regulation, he argued.
This distinction has, so far, not been made by the regulation. Pagès states that “sterile varieties coming from species that are undergoing risk assessments should be excluded from the regulation’s scope”. “Many of the proposed species are actually only a problem under very specific climatic conditions and don´t pose any risk in other member states”, in the view of Bertram Fleischer, ZVG Secretary General. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)