Proposal for a Council Decision on the position to be adopted on behalf of the European Union within the Council of Members of the International Olive Council concerning the accession of new Members

The 2005 International Agreement on Olive Oil and Table Olives (hereinafter the Agreement) establishing the International Olive Council (IOC) provides in its Article 40 that any State may accede to this Agreement upon conditions established by the Council of Members of that organisation.

The Agreement expires on 31 December 2014 and the decision on its prolongation is expected be made before that date. Bearing this in mind, the Council Decision (2014/664/EU) authorises the Commission to request and vote on behalf of the European Union in favour of a one-year extension of the current Agreement. Since 2013 the Members of the IOC have been negotiating the revision of the Agreement. In this context, on 19 November 2013 the Council authorized the Commission to negotiate on behalf of the European Union a new and substantially renewed agreement that takes into account economic, technical and commercial developments in the olive sector.

In line with the negotiating mandate of the Council, the Union submitted a proposal for the revision of the Agreement to the IOC. This proposal covers also provisions pertaining to the expansion of the organisation in order to welcome new members, including both exporting and importing countries, and provisions on the revision of the participation shares (Article 8 of the current Agreement).

The Council of Members of the IOC decides on the possible accession of new members to the Agreement on the basis of Article 40 "Accession" and Article 8 "Participation shares" of the Agreement. The ongoing negotiations will redefine these Articles, as well as the framework of the future IOC with new goals and new governance. Under these conditions, it is necessary that the new agreement first enters into force before the IOC can make decisions on the accessions to the organisation.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)690: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:690:FIN

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