The European Commission presented a delegated act on Tuesday 22 May that allows countries which so wish, including Italy, to state the harvesting year on olive oil labels. The text amends Implementing Regulation 29/2012 on requirements on the labelling of olive oil.
The delegated act has not yet come into force. It is subject to the right of both the European Parliament and the Council to issue objections, in line with Article 290, paragraph 2 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
The text seeks to clarify a number of existing provisions on the inclusion of certain optional information on olive oil labelling (Article 4 of Implementing Regulation 29/2012 on marketing standards for olive oil).
Implementing Regulation 29/2012 states that the value of certain physico-chemical parameters (peroxide value, wax content and the ultraviolet absorption) have to be labelled in cases where acidity is mentioned. The delegated act specifies that those values should correspond to the values expected at the date of minimum durability. Given that the values of those parameters may evolve after the bottling, this clarification will avoid that misleading information being provided to consumers and will give greater protection to operators responsible for the labelling.
The second clarification proposed relates to the harvesting year that may, under certain conditions, be mentioned on the label. At the request of a number of member states, the delegated act proposes two options on how to label the harvesting year.
Lastly, at the request of Italy, and in order to provide information to consumers regarding the age of virgin olive oils, the delegated act allows member states to require their operators to label the harvesting year, under very specific conditions. This requirement is restricted to olive oil produced at national level and intended for domestic consumption. Those limitations have been introduced to ensure that the functioning of the single market is not disrupted. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)