Schmidt has to pull emergency brake: Bio-law must remain viable
Berlin, May 23.05.2017, XNUMX. "The new organic law cannot be implemented with the proposals that have now been submitted", criticized Felix Prinz zu Löwenstein, Chairman of the Bund Ökologische Lebensmittelwirtschaft (BÖLW), the current status of negotiations on the revision of the EU organic regulation. “We have been campaigning for further improvements in organic law for years, for example with regard to organic controls. Now there is a completely impractical proposal that only leads to a mess of data and obscures the view of information relevant for ecological control. Neither farmers, processors and traders nor the authorities will be able to implement this! "
At the 18th trialogue on May 31st, the legislative process should therefore not be concluded. “Agriculture Minister Schmidt has to pull the emergency brake in Brussels. The lawyer Schmidt in particular knows that a functioning legal framework looks different, ”warns Löwenstein. “40.000 organic entrepreneurs in Germany alone need reliability in order to produce high-quality, healthy organic food. The same applies to the experts from the organic inspection bodies and the authorities who want to ensure that organic inspections are carried out and monitored effectively. Legal certainty and practicability are the minimum requirements for every law - and not even those would be met by the current draft. "
Löwenstein concludes: “After more than three years of unsuccessful negotiations, it is now time for a fresh start. The restart must take place on the basis of the tried and tested organic law. Schmidt has the backing of the federal states and the Bundestag for this. "
background objects
A comprehensive revision of the organic law, which was last revised in 2008, has been negotiated in Brussels for over three years. The next big and possibly final decision will be made at the EU Agriculture Council meeting in mid-June. The positions of the member states and those of Parliament and the Commission are currently far apart, which makes a good conclusion to the negotiations by the summer break appear more than difficult. Federal Minister of Agriculture Schmidt has announced several times in the last few months that he will advocate breaking off negotiations if an agreement on a right that is better than the existing one is not possible. The federal states had asked the federal government several times and unanimously to stop the negotiations and to further develop organic law on the basis of the existing ordinance, most recently in January 2017.
In the past few months, Germany had acted as a key driver of the negotiations and thus made further negotiations possible at all. The federal government thus opposed the federal states that are responsible for organic controls and repeatedly (and most recently at the Agriculture Ministers' Conference at the end of March) called for the negotiations in Brussels to be broken off.
It can still be assumed that the present proposals will lead to an overall deterioration.
It would be particularly critical if
- the negotiators are increasingly saying goodbye to EU-wide uniform guidelines on disputed points, which can lead to an even more varied interpretation of organic law and to greater distortions of competition;
- The slightest traces of contamination through no fault of one's own lead to immediate goods bans and official investigations, thus creating an uncontrolled flood of data that prevents the detection of the really relevant policy violations;
- a fixed time limit would be set for the purchase of conventional seeds or animals regardless of whether enough organic seeds and animals are available. In addition, it generally does not work that organic breeding is completely decoupled from breeding progress in the conventional area.
Organic law that cannot be implemented would have harmful effects on growth and employment in rural areas, as well as animal, environmental and climate protection. It would reduce the supply of regional organic products, although the organic market is growing significantly.
