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PARLIAMENT VOTES TO CREATE SINGLE MARKET FOR ORGANIC FERTILIZERS

October 25, 2017 by Barbara Verplancken

ECOFI CALLS ON MEMBER STATES TO ADDRESS TECHNICAL WEAKNESSES

Regarding the proposal for a regulation[1] of the European Parliament and European Council laying down rules on the making available on the market of CE marked fertilising products and amending Regulations (EC) No 1069/2009 and EC No 1107/2009[2]

The European Parliament’s plenary vote on Tuesday, 24 October, was an important step was the creation of a single market for organic fertilizers, organo-mineral fertilizers and organic soil amendments. We support many of the amendments approved by the Members of the European Parliament. However, there are some technical points that require correction before the finalization of the text.

ECOFI welcomes the inclusion of key raw materials for the industry in future CE-marked plant nutrition products and calls on Member States to:

  • Agree to the amendments enlarging CMC 2 to include any plant-based material or substance that doesn’t require REACH registration;
  • Follow the European Parliament’s lead in granting endpoint status to the materials derived from animal by-products that are already widely used at national level and those that are already approved for use in fertilizers at EU level.

With regard to more technical aspects of the regulation, we call on Member States to work with industry to correct a number of technical points, including where concepts for mineral fertilizers have been inappropriately applied to organic-based products:

  • Incoherent minimum nutrient content across solid and liquid organic fertilizers and organo-mineral fertilizers;
  • Definitions of “total” nutrients and labelling requirements that erroneously cite only inorganic (mineral) forms, whereas the point of organic-based products is to provide organic forms of nutrients that are gradually made available to plants by natural processes in the soil;
  • Other issues related to declaration and analysis of nutrient content.

Download ECOFI’s full statement, including the specific points that need to be corrected.

 

[1] 2016/0084(COD)

[2] Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market