On Thursday 5 March, representatives of the European Parliament, the EU Council and the European Commission reached a provisional political agreement on the proposed revision of the Common Market Organisation (CMO) regulation.
The proposal aims to increase farmers’ incomes by strengthening their negotiating power, for example by making written contracts compulsory. Two issues remained to be resolved after the December trilogue (see EUROPE 13822/11).
Written contracts. Ultimately, Member States will not have a total ‘opt-out’ (voluntary derogation) for written contracts in the dairy sector. Written contracts will also be compulsory in this sector, but Member States will be able to make certain provisions optional, for example the obligation to detail the method of determining the final price of the product.
The compromise on this point, as seen by Agence Europe, stipulates that the milk or the milk products concerned are delivered by a member of a producer organisation or cooperative to the producer organisation or cooperative of which it is a member, “provided that the statutes of that producer organisation or cooperative or the rules and decisions provided for in, or derived from, these statutes, provide for transparent and democratically decided rules, known in advance, for methods for determining the price of the milk or milk products delivered, taking into account the impact on the remuneration of farmers, and the payment periods and procedures”.
The European Milk Board (EMB) is critical of the “major exceptions” planned for the dairy sector. “Member States may, after consultation with the industry, decide that certain contractual requirements such as revision clauses and indicators need not be applied”, explains the organisation. The situation of dairy cooperative members remains critical. “No compulsory contract is provided for in this case, because it is assumed - wrongly - that the cooperatives’ articles of association already guarantee sufficient transparency”, according to the EMB.
Denominations. Rules for the protection of the term ‘meat’ and a number of meat-related designations are laid down for: beef, veal, pork, poultry, chicken, turkey, duck, goose, lamb, mutton, ovine, goat, drumstick, tenderloin, sirloin, flank, loin, steak, ribs, shoulder, shank, chop, wing, breast, liver, thigh, brisket, ribeye, T-bone, rump and bacon.
These terms will be reserved for meat products only and cannot be used for non-meat products.
For Farm Europe, the decision to protect certain names associated with meat, such as ‘steak’, and to exclude products derived from cell or laboratory cultures from the use of these terms is “an important step forward for producers and consumers”. According to Farm Europe, this protection could be extended to other names in the future.
Food products must be designated by exact terms to avoid any confusion between products of animal origin and their “often highly processed” alternatives, stresses the think tank, which believes that the agreement represents a step towards EU-wide harmonisation of terminology relating to meat products, along the lines of the rules in the dairy sector. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)