Brussels, 12/12/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 18 December, the European Commission is due to adopt a proposal from Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel to bring the operation regulations for 21 common market organisations (CMOs) together in one single legislative act. Ms Fischer Boel says she does not wish to change market policies. This single CMO aims to rationalise and simplify the current legal framework. With this new CMO, due to come into force in 2008, the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) would be governed, in the main, by four regulations (CMO, direct payments, rural development and CAP funding).
The proposal would put in place a single series of harmonised rules in traditional market policy areas: intervention, private storage, import tariff quotas, export refunds, safeguard measures, state aid and competition, and data collection and distribution rules. It will get rid of 35 current regulations, replacing them with one single regulation of about a hundred pages.
The CMO envisaged would cover: - all products currently subject to a recently reformed CMO (beef and veal, porkmeat, sheep and goatmeat, poultrymeat, eggs, milk and dairy products, sugar, tobacco, flax and hemp, cereals, rice, dried fodder, hops, seeds, olive oil, trees, plants and flowers; - the silkworm, ethyl alcohol of agricultural origin and apiculture products sectors (which are not subject to CMOs, but are governed by specific measures); - those sectors where review is underway, i.e. fresh and processed fruit and vegetables, bananas and wine (the new basic regulation will at first include proposals not affected by the review, such as those on state aid, decision-making and information to be submitted to the Commission, then the new reviewed legislative acts would follow); - other regulations applicable to products subject to CMO rules (milk quotas, private storage and public intervention). Only cotton will not form part of the single regulation, given its peculiar status (the support system depends on the protocol annexed to Greece's accession treaty).
The Commission believes that creating a single CMO is first and foremost an act of technical simplification and says it does not want to repeal or change existing instruments “unless they have become obsolete, redundant or should not by their very nature be dealt with at Council level”. The only modifications envisaged relate to the adoption procedure of some decisions. (lc)