On Tuesday 15 December, Italy, Greece and the Czech Republic blocked the adoption of the Agriculture Council conclusions on front-of-pack nutrition labelling for food. The text will therefore take the form of the conclusions of the German Presidency of the EU Council, which was supported by a majority of EU agriculture ministers.
For its part, the European Commission has indicated that after an impact assessment and referral, it will present a proposal for a harmonised front-of-pack nutrition labelling system.
Italy, Greece and the Czech Republic are opposed to a coded nutrition labelling system on the front of packages that will assess the nutritional value of food (such as the ‘'Nutri-Score’). Italy favours a voluntary, non colour coded and non discriminatory labelling scheme that describes the foodstuff’s energy and nutrient contents.
Several delegations, including Poland, have argued for the exemption of certain categories of foodstuffs from such labelling, such as food categories like Protected Designations of Origin, Protected Geographical Indications, Traditional Specialities Guaranteed, or single ingredient products.
Agriculture ministers were generally in favour of the part of the text of the conclusions regarding the origin of products. Italy, however, has requested for the origin to be provided for all products, and not just some.
See the conclusions of the German Presidency: https://bit.ly/38d4kFs
Voluntary Animal Welfare Labelling Scheme. EU agriculture ministers have this time unanimously adopted conclusions calling on the European Commission to propose a harmonised EU-wide voluntary animal welfare labelling scheme.
This label covers all stages of production – breeding, transport and slaughter – and will be awarded to food produced to higher standards than those laid down in EU legislation.
The EU-27 expect EU-side harmonised “relevant, measurable and verifiable criteria that (...) take into account Member States’ geographic and climatic specificities and include criteria that are achievable by all of them”.
The European Commission is expected to present an impact assessment and related legislative proposals in 2021.
“European labelling will only serve to increase the added value of European production and there should be no competition issues as long as the scheme is voluntary”, emphasised the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski.
Miscellaneous. Furthermore, the German Presidency of the EU Council: - referred to the results of the conference on the ‘digital transformation of the agricultural value chain’, which was organised by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the European Agricultural Research Initiative (2–3 December 2020); - discussed the ‘Conference of Directors of EU Paying Agencies’ (8–9 October 2020), which focused on future challenges for paying agencies within the context of the future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)