This was in part due to the fact that during the latest SCA meeting on Monday 5th December, the member states did not reach an agreement on a new mandate for negotiations and the other institutions kept maintaining their red lines (EP : heterogeneous material); COM (residues of pesticides).
On Friday 9th of December, an extraordinary SCA meeting is organised in view for the member states to prepare the Council of Ministers of agriculture that will take place on Monday. It is expected that the Ministers will hold a policy debate on a “progress report”.
For now, it seems that the negotiations will continue under the Maltese presidency.
The NFU have co-signed a joint letter along with other key stakeholders within the organic industry, addressed to George Eustice MP, to stress that the proposals put forwards by the Commission are clearly not fit for purpose, and as a result negotiations have not succeeded in reaching a political agreement on the text after 14 Trilogues and numerous other technical meetings.
The current Presidency has sought to focus on resolving a small number of critical issues. These all represent “red lines” for the UK, but even if agreement can be found on any or all of these, the text will still offer no advantages over the current rules. Indeed, much of the technical coherence has been lost in the protracted negotiations and we do not believe that the current process can correct this.
We understand that the Presidency will now propose a period of reflection before negotiations resume in 2017 and that Ministers will not be given the opportunity to comment on the state of the negotiation in the Council meeting. We strongly believe that this proposal is unnecessary and inappropriate and ask that George Eustice ensures that the SCA will reject any continuation of the review and should be given the opportunity to express a clear opinion in the Agriculture and Fisheries Council that the Trilogues should not continue in 2017.
Although the organic industry has worked tirelessly with DEFRA officials to improve the proposal made by the European Commission in March 2014, it is our firm view that the current regulatory framework already provides a strong basis for the development of organic food and farming in the UK.