On Tuesday 21 April, negotiators from the EU Council and the European Parliament made progress in negotiations on the proposed regulation on the production and marketing of plant reproductive material.
The aim of the proposal is to radically overhaul the legal framework applicable to seeds and other plant reproductive material in the EU. The 81-Article text amends several existing regulations and repeals 12 sector-specific directives, some of which date back to the 1960s (see EUROPE 13770/34).
The main objective of this second ‘trilogue’ was to identify political ‘landing zones’ on three of the five outstanding issues: the examination of Value for Sustainable Cultivation and Use (VSCU), the rules applicable to imports, and the conservation of plant genetic resources.
The VSCU system is used to assess whether a new variety offers real added value in terms of sustainability, resilience and reduced inputs. While it already applies to arable crops, it does not yet cover fruit and vegetables.
Three options are currently up for discussion: the status quo, a delegated act, or a review clause. The EU Council favours a delegated act, while Parliament defends a voluntary approach for breeders, with a revision clause after 10 years. The co-legislators agreed to continue work at a technical level, favouring the review clause option for the time being.
Most of the text on imports of plant reproductive material has already been stabilised. Parliament accepted the EU Council’s mandate, including the provisions relating to neighbouring countries and certain derogations for vegetable seeds.
However, one technical point remains under discussion: the issue of initial audits for equivalence requests submitted by third countries. The EU Council wants to make these audits systematic, while the Commission cites resource constraints and the existence of recognised international standards. This point has yet to be settled between the Commission and the EU Council.
The conservation of plant genetic resources is one of the pillars of the parliamentary mandate. Discussions focused on the definitions of conservation varieties and local varieties, as well as on a number of exemption schemes designed to facilitate the work of conservation networks and organisations.
Parliament had proposed excluding certain dynamic conservation activities entirely from the scope of the Regulation, subject to precise quantitative thresholds. This approach has been rejected by both the Commission and the EU Council, who see a risk of deregulation. The preferred approach now seems to be a targeted extension of existing derogations, in order to reconcile biodiversity, traceability and legal certainty.
The next trilogue is scheduled for 4 June, with the clear ambition of concluding negotiations on this text. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)