On Friday 13 June, the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States to the EU (Coreper) approved the EU Council’s negotiating mandate on rules to improve the quality and availability of forest reproductive material (FRM) (https://aeur.eu/f/hc2 ).
Under the proposal, Member States would be required to enter the basic material approved on their territory in national registers. The European Commission is expected to publish an EU-wide list to ensure full traceability.
At present, the number and type of controls applied to FRM vary considerably from one Member State to another. In order to harmonise the rules, the Commission had proposed extending the scope of the official controls regulation to FRMs. The EU Council recognises the need for official controls to be applied consistently across all Member States. However, due to the specificities of FRM and in order to limit the administrative and financial burden, the EU Council agreed that the FRM sector could not fall within the scope of the official controls regulation.
Consequently, in its negotiating mandate, the EU Council proposes that the new FRM regulation contain a set of provisions specific to controls, ensuring the quality and traceability of FRM (rules for designating competent control authorities, defining their legal powers and providing adequate financial resources). These provisions would be supplemented by certain elements of the official controls regulation to ensure consistent application in all Member States. Key elements of the official controls regulation applying to the FRM sector would include controls on FRM entering the EU, the delegation of certain tasks by competent authorities, confidentiality obligations for these authorities and staff training.
The Commission has proposed introducing national contingency plans to ensure sufficient supplies of FRM, for example to help reforest areas affected by extreme weather events. In order to reduce the administrative burden on the competent authorities, the EU Council agreed that these national contingency plans would be optional.
List of forest species. The list of forest species covered by the regulation has been streamlined. Member States may apply more or less stringent measures to species not listed in the annex.
The EU Council’s negotiating mandate also further specifies the rules on record keeping and the obligations of operators. In particular, professional operators will have to be entered in a register. In addition, they will have to ensure the traceability and identification of FRM at all stages of production and marketing and provide the user with complete information on the FRM via a document.
The EU Council Presidency is ready to begin negotiations with the European Parliament on the regulation’s final text.
In addition, the Polish Presidency of the EU Council presented a new compromise text on the proposal for a regulation on the production and marketing of plant reproductive material in the EU (https://aeur.eu/f/hbb ). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)