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Olive Council Members Draft New Agreement

By Isabel Putinja
Jun. 24, 2015 12:29 UTC
Summary Summary

The International Olive Council has agreed on a draft text for a new agree­ment to replace the cur­rent 2005 agree­ment, with nego­ti­a­tions set to take place in October 2015 at a United Nations con­fer­ence in Geneva. The new agree­ment is expected to be in force from January 1, 2017 until the end of 2026, with changes includ­ing a new for­mula for cal­cu­lat­ing mem­ber coun­tries’ par­tic­i­pa­tion shares in the bud­get and a revised deci­sion-mak­ing process for inter­na­tional trade stan­dards.

The mem­ber coun­tries of the International Olive Council (IOC) have agreed on a draft text to replace the cur­rent 2005 agree­ment. The doc­u­ment will serve as a basis for nego­ti­a­tions on the new agree­ment due to be dis­cussed in October 2015 at a United Nations con­fer­ence in Geneva. The new agree­ment is expected to enter into force on January 1, 2017 until the end of 2026.

Discussions on the draft text took place just before the IOC’s 24th extra­or­di­nary ses­sion in Madrid last week.

The draft text intro­duces sev­eral impor­tant changes to the cur­rent agree­ment, includ­ing:

- More weight is to be given to con­sumer coun­tries via a pro­posed for­mula which cal­cu­lates mem­ber coun­tries’ par­tic­i­pa­tion shares in the bud­get of the IOC by look­ing at pro­duc­tion, exports and imports equally.

- A new deci­sion-mak­ing process for top­ics related to the IOC’s inter­na­tional trade stan­dard which includes new steps aim­ing at con­sen­sus-build­ing incor­po­rat­ing a new vot­ing pro­ce­dure.

Following dis­cus­sions on the new agree­ment, the IOC’s 24th extra­or­di­nary ses­sion of the Council of Members was held June 16 – 19. Several mea­sures for adop­tion were dis­cussed by the spe­cial­ist com­mit­tees:

- The Economic Committee took deci­sions to defer pub­li­ca­tion of the results of the pro­duc­tion costs study in order to ver­ify data, to request val­i­da­tion of the method­ol­ogy for the value chain study, and to hold the May 2016 meet­ing of the IOC Advisory Committee on Olive Oil and Table Olives in Iran which will include a regional sem­i­nar on a rel­e­vant topic.

- Members of the Promotion Committee decided to pub­lish a new call in July for grant appli­ca­tions for pro­mo­tional activ­i­ties to be under­taken between 1 October 2015 and 31 March 2016.

- The Technical Committee pro­posed not chang­ing the ethyl ester limit of 35 mg/kg for the upcom­ing crop year, to hold a meet­ing this fall to orga­nize an IOC sem­i­nar in 2016 on Xylella fas­tidiosa, and to come up with rec­om­men­da­tions for the orga­niz­ers of qual­ity com­pe­ti­tions.


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