THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ADOPTS REGULATION ON

ORGANIC PRODUCTION AND LABELLING OF ORGANIC PRODUCTS

On April 19, 2018, the European Parliament in plenary session voted in favour of the adoption of Regulation on organic
production and labelling of organic products, repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007. The Regulation was
proposed by the European Commission in 2014 to address concerns over the lack of consumer confidence in products
labelled as organic and aims at removing the obstacles to the development of organic production in the European
Union by ensuring fair competition for farmers and operators and a proper functioning of the internal market in
organic products.

CONTEXT

The proposed Regulation on organic production and labelling of organic products was presented by the
European Commission in March 2014, with the aim of revising the existing legislative framework and
removing obstacles to the sustainable development of organic production in the EU. The proposal also
aimed at addressing concerns over the risk of the erosion of consumer confidence, as well as shortcomings
in the control system and import regime. Therefore, the Commission’s proposal focused on granting fair
competition for farmers and operators, preventing fraud and unfair practices and improving consumer
confidence in organic products.

The proposal was referred to the Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI),
which voted on the draft report prepared by rapporteur Martin Hausling (Greens/EFA, Germany) in
October 2015. Since then – and for over two and a half years – the European Parliament, the Council and
the Commission have engaged in lengthy and contentious negotiations to find an agreement on a
legislative text, with eighteen trilogues taking place between November 2015 and June 2017. Finally,
after bilateral meetings with Member States, the Council and the European Parliament reached a
preliminary agreement on the new Regulation in the form of a revised text. Together with other
amendments, MEPs successfully proposed that the controls under the new rules would include at least one
annual physical on-site check of compliance with EU standards by farmers, breeders, processors, traders
and importers, to be done throughout the organic production chain, thus giving consumers guarantees that
the organic products they buy are truly organic. Moreover, MEPs pushed to increase organic seed supply,
through the creation of a database of organic plant reproductive material in each Member State.

On 20 November 2017, the final text of the revised organic regulation agreed upon in the trilogues was
endorsed by the Ministers of Agriculture of the 28 MS in the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA).
Following their approval, the chairman of the SCA confirmed that if the Parliament would adopt the
compromise text as approved by the SCA, the Council would have adopted the same text in first reading
without amendments.

THE REGULATION

After being approved by Parliament's AGRI Committee on 22 November 2017 (29 votes for, 11 against and
4 abstentions), on 19 April 2018 the text was finally voted in plenary by the European Parliament.

As previously mentioned, the aim of the Regulation on organic production and labelling of organic products
is to ensure fair competition for farmers and operators and a proper functioning of the internal market in
organic products, to maintain and justify consumer confidence in products labelled as organic and to
remove any obstacles to the development of organic production in the EU. This legislative proposal has
been put forward by the Commission because the objective of the sustainable development of organic
production has not been realised under the current framework, leading to lost opportunities for both
farmers and operators (the organic land area in the EU has only doubled in the last 10 years, while the

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market has increased fourfold) and putting limits to the organic market expansion and the environmental
benefits associated with organic production.

NEXT STEPS

As the next step of the legislative procedure, the Regulation on organic production and labelling of organic
products will be formally voted by the Council, before being signed and published in the EU's Official
Journal. Once officially adopted, the new Regulation will enter into force on January 1, 2021.