Brussels, 24/02/2004 (Agence Europe) - Tuesday's Agriculture and Fisheries Council adopted without debate modifications to the 1991 regulation on labelling and controls for biological agricultural products and foodstuffs. These changes allow better protection of terms associated with organic production and the diminutives "bio" and "eco" in all Community languages: "biological" in French, Greek, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese, "ecological" in Spanish, German, Danish and Swedish, "organic" in English and "luonnonmukainen" in Finnish.
Spain, whose industry still uses "bio" for standard products, voted against the text. Madrid is involved with a trial with the European Commission before the Court of Justice on this subject. The main changes from the European Commission's initial proposal (dating form the beginning of 2003) are as follows: -choice of terms "ökologisch" and "biologisch" in German (instead of just "ökologisch"); -exemption from control rules of operators selling directly to the end user; -possibility of inspections under the authority of national authorities or private companies nominated to do so; -option of changing rules again in July 2005.