On Monday 27 January in Brussels, the European agriculture ministers generally welcomed the legislative proposals aimed at strengthening the position of farmers in the food supply chain.
Presented last November, these proposals concern the cross-border application of rules on unfair commercial practices and a targeted amendment to the regulation on the Common Market Organisation (CMO) (see EUROPE 13542/6).
Unfair business practices. Denmark and Sweden regretted the absence of an impact assessment on the two proposals. Italy and Spain asked that countries be left free to adopt stricter national measures. Portugal and Germany welcomed the strengthening of the mechanism for cooperation between countries in cross-border cases.
CMO. Some countries, such as Estonia, criticised the measure aimed at making it compulsory to set up mediation mechanisms between farmers and their buyers.
Austria, Sweden and Denmark mentioned a possible bureaucratic overload, particularly with regard to compulsory written contracts, and felt that an impact assessment would be useful.
Farmers’ sales to cooperatives must be excluded from compulsory written contracts, according to the Danish minister. France, on the other hand, supported the general introduction of compulsory written contracts, with adjustments for certain sectors.
Italy, which generally welcomed the two proposals, suggested amending the legislative framework to deal with crises in the fruit and vegetable sector in particular.
France also referred to the need to guarantee “the ability of a country to carry out controls on distributors who entrust negotiations to central purchasing bodies based in another EU country”. The ability to apply sanctions against these distributors will also have to be guaranteed, according to the French authorities.
Wine. Several countries (Spain, France, Italy, Germany) called for measures to help the wine sector (grubbing-up, planting rights).
Italy mentioned harmonising the rules for electronic wine labelling.
EBAF. On Monday, the European Commission announced the creation of the ‘European Board on Agriculture and Food’ (EBAF). This announcement came at the end of the strategic dialogue on the future of agriculture (see EUROPE 13539/13).
Chaired by European Commissioner Christophe Hansen, the EBAF aims to support a new culture of dialogue and multi-stakeholder participation between stakeholders in the food supply chain and civil society. The first meeting will take place on Tuesday 4 February.
Link to the 30 members of the EBAF committee: https://aeur.eu/f/f8u (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)