This is to inform our stakeholders of the adoption by the Council and the European Parliament of the new regulation on organic production and labeling, which repeals repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007. Important provisions to note regarding EU importation of organic products from Third countries are as follows:

The new organic Regulation will apply to live and unprocessed agricultural products, including seeds and other plant reproductive material and processed agricultural products used as food and feed.

  1. Processed products could be only be labelled as organic if at least 95% of the agricultural ingredients are organic.
  2. One set of EU-wide rules covering the whole EU organic sector from 01 January 2021 – a single set of rules will apply to EU and non-EU farmers who export their organic products to the EU market. The present requirement of “unilateral equivalence” of organic products coming from third countries and certified as such by control authorities and control bodies will be phased out and replaced by the “conformity” rule, i.e. EU-wide rules.
  3. Imports from countries having “equivalence” agreements with the EU will remain in place until 31 December 2025.
  4. FTA-partners of the EU recognized to have “equivalent” rules on organic production, will be able to freely enter the EU market. Post Note – This could be the best solution for our PH exporters but our negotiation is at a “standstill” at this point.
  5. Scope of the rules has been extended to a range of new products such as salt, cork and essential oils and new products can be included in the future to respond to the development of the sector and to consumers’ demands, providing additional opportunities for producers.
  6. The list of recognized control bodies for Third-country imports, i.e. those used by PH exporters of organic products certifying our exports to the EU, will likely migrate to the EU-accredited list thru an application process, which started 17 July 2018.
  7. Annex II of Regulation 2018/848 covers the detailed production rules from plant to livestock to processed food production (e.g. use of food additives), processed feed production and wine making.

Full text of the regulation below:

Related posts:

No related posts.