Europe Opens New Infringement Procedure Over Italy's Handling of Xylella

Summary

The European Union has ini­ti­ated an infringe­ment pro­ce­dure against Italy for fail­ing to promptly address the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa in Apulia, giv­ing Italy 60 days to respond and imple­ment nec­es­sary mea­sures. The Italian gov­ern­ment is con­ven­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss actions to com­bat the bac­terium, while pros­e­cu­tors in Lecce have released seized olive trees and plan to share pos­i­tive results of exper­i­men­tal treat­ments with the European Commission.

The European Union has opened an infringe­ment pro­ce­dure against Italy over an alleged delay in apply­ing mea­sures against the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa in Apulia.

Some days ago, the European Commissioner for health and food safety Vytenis Andriukaitis met the Italian Minister of Agriculture Maurizio Martina and informed him that ​“the Commission would have no choice but to open an infringe­ment pro­ce­dure unless imme­di­ate actions were taken by Italy against the bac­terium.”
See Also:Complete Coverage of the Xylella Fastidiosa Outbreak
Italy has 60 days to respond to the let­ter of for­mal notice and take steps through the imple­men­ta­tion of the require­ments imposed by the European Commission. Otherwise, the EU will pass to the next mea­sure, send­ing a rea­soned opin­ion on the mat­ter.

The Italian gov­ern­ment has con­vened the Apulia Region for a meet­ing next week in Rome, where actions and activ­i­ties to con­trast the spread of the bac­terium must be sub­mit­ted.

A first infringe­ment pro­ce­dure was opened at the end of 2015 and, based on the Commission Decision 2015/789, reproached the delays and ordered an uproot­ing of all the trees, even healthy ones, within one hun­dred meters around the infected plants.

Later, with its deci­sion 764/2016, the EU estab­lished the need to cre­ate a buffer zone to the north of the infected area in Salento, with a width of not less than 10 Km (6.2 miles) and, within the infected area, a con­tain­ment area with a width of 20 Km.

The Prosecutor of Lecce Cataldo Motta and pub­lic pros­e­cu­tors Elsa Valeria Mignone and Roberta Licci have just ordered the release of the olive trees which have been seized in December, fol­low­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of any pos­si­ble respon­si­bil­ity in the spread of Xf and real causes of the so-called CoDiRO (Rapid Complex Desiccation of Olive Trees). This mea­sure is not a direct result of the open­ing of the new infringe­ment pro­ce­dure against Italy, but it is a sep­a­rate deci­sion med­i­tated for months by pros­e­cu­tors.

The pros­e­cu­tor intends to send to the European Commission the results of exper­i­men­tal nat­ural treat­ments and ​‘good farm­ing prac­tices’ car­ried out in recent months on infected trees, which showed vis­i­ble signs of improve­ment.

Through mon­i­tor­ing in the field, it was found that some plants fully recov­ered with prun­ing and clean­ing of the ground com­bined with nat­ural meth­ods. In par­tic­u­lar, in the area between Brindisi and Lecce, the sit­u­a­tion has changed as olive trees made a com­plete recov­ery and these results could affect the next EU direc­tives.

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