Negotiations between the three EU institutions on the revision of the Regulation on statistics on agricultural inputs and products made some progress during the last negotiating session on 28 April.
A compromise has been reached on one of the most sensitive points: the annual collection of data on pesticides.
The proposal stipulates that Member States submit statistics on pesticide use to Eurostat on an annual basis (instead of every 5 years as at present), collect these data from existing farm registers on pesticide use (instead of voluntary surveys), and that farms keep and transmit their registers electronically in the future.
As a compromise, the Commission proposed a transition period of 4 years during which two surveys would be conducted. A compromise may have been found for a transition period of 3 years (starting in 2025) during which only one survey will be conducted. The annual monitoring scheme would therefore come into force in 2028.
Other issues remain open, such as the coverage rate of the scheme and the pace of phasing-in. The Commission proposes to monitor 19 crops that would cover 75% of the EU’s agricultural area.
Common ground could be found on veterinary medicines, with the creation of a database of data collected by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Finally, due to the lack of available data, the request by MEPs to collect information on biocidal products was finally dropped. Pétros S. Kókkalis (The Left, Greece) is Parliament’s rapporteur on this dossier.
The final trilogue is scheduled for 2 June. The French Presidency of the Council of the EU presented the first results of the negotiations at the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) on 2 May and will return to the dossier at the SCA on 16 May (https://aeur.eu/f/1j9 ). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)