On Monday 26 January, the European Commission announced the creation of a task force to maintain and strengthen the EU’s ability to ensure that imports comply with EU standards (see EUROPE 13781/4).
The task force will focus its attention on food and feed safety, pesticide residues and coordinated EU monitoring actions concerning certain imported products.
It brings together experts from the Commission and the Member States and will contribute to: - greater harmonisation of import controls within the EU; - developing recommendations for joint action by the Commission and the Member States; - identifying the need for additional administrative or regulatory measures to strengthen controls.
Strict import rules – on food hygiene, animal feed, consumer safety and animal and plant health – are designed to ensure that all imports meet the same high standards as European products, according to the Commission.
The creation of this task force was announced in the margins of the Agriculture Council meeting, at a working lunch of the ministers.
“The EU requirements on food and feed must apply uniformly to all food and feed products. Either those are produced in the European Union or they are imported into the Union”, said the Cypriot Minister of Agriculture, Maria Panayiotou. She called for better coordination between Member States, closer collaboration between the Commission and national authorities and, above all, greater consistency. “We want controls that actually work on the ground”, she insisted.
The European Commissioner for Health, Olivér Várhelyi, told the press that the Commission was committed to stepping up controls outside the EU in order to verify the compliance of third countries wishing to export their products to the EU. “Today, we have created an even more solid institutional framework to speed up work between the various authorities in the Member States and prevent certain products from seeking to circumvent the rules or controls in place”, he said. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)