Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the establishment of a European fund for minor uses in the field of plant protection products

Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 regulates the placing of plant protection products (PPP) on the market and contains special provisions for the application and authorisation of so called minor uses. These are uses of PPP that are economically not sustainable for the plant protection industry, but important for growers. The Regulation requires the Commission to present a report to the European Parliament and Council on the establishment of a European fund for minor uses, accompanied, if appropriate, by a legislative proposal.

Minor uses are mostly connected to minor crops that together are valued at about €70 billion per year, which is 22% of the total EU plant production value. It was estimated that direct impacts on the agricultural sector (i.e. crop production loss and additional growing costs for farmers) account for more than €1 billion per year. Furthermore most Member States consider minor uses to be so important that already today structural money and manpower amounting to approximately €8 millions are spent to address the issue.

The Commission notes that the main causes for the minor uses problem are:
- absence of economic incentives to apply for authorisation of PPP;
- inhomogeneous availability of PPP for minor uses as economic incentives and needs vary between MS;
- difficult access to and complicated use of regulatory pathways to obtain extensions of use for third parties;
- lack of information on existing initiatives in other MS.

Noting that coordination at the European level is essential to solve the minor use problem, noting that Member States have already national efforts in place, and noting that there are currently a number of grassroots stakeholder activities ongoing, the Commission proposes the establishment of a coordination group.

The Commission is of the opinion that, in the short and medium term, the creation of a coordination platform would be sufficient, to which the Commission is prepared to financially contribute based on Article 76(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009. Once the facility has been established and becomes operational, the Commission will assess its functioning as well as the results achieved and may propose further appropriate measures.

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)82: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:082:FIN

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