17 February Agriculture Council

Date: 20/02/1997

DESPITE a very low-key agenda, the meeting went on until the early hours of the morning because the Dutch presidency wanted to make significant progress on proposals for beef labelling and animal identification. After a lengthy debate, the presidency attempted to table an 'orientation paper' to help achieve political agreement at next month's ministerial meeting. But because this raised various problems with different member states, it was not included in the final Council declaration. The key decision remains whether the beef labelling system should be voluntary (as favoured by the Commission, plus the UK and Italy), or compulsory. Even those who support the latter option accept that such a system could not be in place much before 2000. On animal identification, a number of technical issues remain to be resolved, but most member states accept that animals must be tagged at 14 days old using some form of double tagging system, and that every movement should be reported within three days.

ON OLIVE oil reform, the main producer countries objected to the 'per tree' payment system preferred by the Commission. The special committee for agriculture will now study the options, and Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler said he wanted to table concrete proposals by the end of July. Tobacco producers expressed similar reserves about the Commission's report.

MINISTERS discussed a Commission paper on penalties for overplanting in the oilseed sector. Portugal, Spain and the UK preferred a broader EU- wide approach to penalising overshoots of area quotas, but most ministers backed the Commission's preference for the status quo and there will be no proposals for reform.

THE UK and Italy presented their dairy reform papers, and Spain and Greece called for proposals to accompany the price package. Fischler repeated that his options paper would be ready later in the year, and that the informal ministerial meeting in Domburg in May would consider the issues.

FISCHLER outlined the measures adopted by the Commission last week in response to the Parliament's temporary committee of inquiry on BSE, and emphasised the enhanced role to be played by the multi-disciplinary committee in coordinating the scientific advisory committees. He said recent Commission inspections of the national implementation of BSE measures would be put into a report with recommendations to go to the Standing Veterinary Committee in April. He indicated the Commission was ready to come forward with more legislation based on Article 189 (requiring co-decision with the Parliament), rather than Article 43 (which only requires consultation with MEPs).

ANSWERING concerns about the use of genetically-modified organisms in feed, Fischler confirmed that the legal service of the Directorate-General for agriculture (DGVI) was trying to clarify the present situation and that proposals would be presented this year.

AGREEMENT on extending the transitional period for imposing new rules to protect regional foods was postponed. Germany apparently had problems with the legal text. Greece and Italy had already indicated they would vote against a plan to apply the five-year transitional period from the date on which a product was officially registered instead of the date of publication of the regulation in July 1992.