Together with a number of trade associations in the plant-based sector, Europatat (Potato growers Europe) had advocated to support the Commission’s original proposal which modernises and improves the EU’s plant health legislation.
Europatat particularly favoured the possibility for operators to take on some tasks currently performed by the competent authorities. As such authorised operators would be able to issue plant passports and pre-export certificates under supervision.
The plant-based sector was however deeply concerned by a proposal from the EP Agricultural Committee, which introduced a reversed strategy on imports. Portrayed as a silver bullet solution to prevent the introduction of new pests and alleviate the organisation of import controls, the cost-benefit equation and effectiveness of such a strategy was highly debatable.
Europatat was particularly worried about retaliatory measures by trading partners and the massive workload to handle all authorisations from third countries which would quickly result in a bottleneck situation exacerbated by budget cuts in the public administration. This would ultimately also affect the services, which the potato sector today enjoys in market access efforts across the world.
Under the leadership of Rapporteur MEP Hynek Fajmon, the Plenary of the European Parliament however demonstrated common sense by rejecting the reversed strategy on imports. In counterpart, provisions on new high-risk trade were strengthened.
“We are glad to note the Commission proposal was largely maintained, and further improved on a number of issues. Given the importance of plant health for the potato supply chain, we hope the integration of plant health controls under the overall EU official controls system will result in a more effective and harmonised enforcement across all EU Member States. A swifter follow-up and appropriate response to recurrent interceptions and negative EU audits should be systematically pursued, coordinated and enforced at EU and Member State level”, said Frédéric Rosseneu, Secretary-General of Europatat.
