Europe Moves Forward with Rules to Prevent Influx of Plant Pests

Summary

The European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee approved new rules to pre­vent plant pests like Xylella fas­tidiosa from enter­ing the EU, aim­ing to pro­tect bio­di­ver­sity and plant prod­ucts while ensur­ing rapid response mech­a­nisms are in place. The mea­sures include a pre­lim­i­nary assess­ment mech­a­nism to ban risky plants, a plant pass­port sys­tem for imports, and multi-annual sur­veys to detect pests, with the draft rules endorsed by the Agriculture Committee and await­ing final approval by the European Council and Parliament.

The European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee endorsed new rules to reduce the risk of plant pests like Xylella fas­tidiosa from enter­ing the EU.

The pro­posed mea­sures aim to pre­vent plant pests inad­ver­tently enter­ing EU ter­ri­tory and ensure that rapid response mech­a­nisms are in place to quickly erad­i­cate infected plants.

Plant pests can have dev­as­tat­ing effects on plant prod­ucts and liveli­hoods. Xylella fas­tidiosa has dec­i­mated acres of olive groves in Apulia (Puglia) and there are other reported infec­tions in Corsica and main­land France.

“Plants pests and dis­eases do not respect bor­ders and we need to pro­tect our bio­di­ver­sity by lay­ing down basic pro­ce­dures for all 28 EU mem­ber states to adopt,” said Agriculture Committee rap­por­teur Anthea McIntyre in a press release by the European Parliament. ​“At the same time, we must be care­ful not to sti­fle trade in plants and plant prod­ucts by intro­duc­ing unnec­es­sary lay­ers of bureau­cracy. This report strikes the right bal­ance by pro­tect­ing trade while allow­ing us to respond to threats in a coor­di­nated way across the EU.”

Under the new rules, a ​“pre­lim­i­nary assess­ment mech­a­nism” would be cre­ated to iden­tify poten­tially risky plants and plant prod­ucts so their import into the EU could be banned. Also, all plants and plant prod­ucts from non-EU coun­tries would require a plant health cer­tifi­cate for import into the EU and be sub­ject to the recently pro­posed​“plant pass­port” sys­tem.

Only plants imported by pri­vate indi­vid­u­als for use in home gar­dens would be exempt from the require­ments. At the same time, all EU mem­ber states would be required to carry out ​“multi-annual sur­veys” in order to detect pos­si­ble pests and come up with an erad­i­ca­tion plan. Existing rules gov­ern­ing com­pen­sa­tion for grow­ers whose infected plants are erad­i­cated will also be updated.

The new draft rules, which had been approved by European Parliament and European Council nego­tia­tors in last December, were endorsed through the vot­ing pro­ce­dure by the Agriculture Committee on April 26. The next step is for­mal approval by the European Council, before the Agriculture Committee gives its final approval and for­wards the text for sec­ond read­ing and approval by the European Parliament as a whole.

• European Parliament


• European Parliament