In view of the upcoming reform of EU promotion policy of Agricultural Products, Copa-Cogeca welcomed today the EU Commissions’ Green Paper on this, claiming it looks at a broad range of topics that need to be addressed.

Copa-Cogeca Secretary-General Pekka Pesonen stressed “Promotion of agricultural products is a key policy and has an important role to play in the future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In view of the challenges EU farmers and agri-cooperatives will be facing in future, it will be even more crucial to promote EU agricultural products on domestic and foreign markets, in order to inform consumers about the EU’s high quality goods and production standards”. But he insisted that its only a complementary measure and must not substitute for other instruments under the CAP, notably export refunds.

The document, for consultation with industry and stakeholders, presents a series of questions concerning: review of actions on the external and internal markets; setting up of actions in the local and regional market;  the need for greater coherence with other CAP instruments ; use of private brands ; origin labelling ;reinforcement of the multimember state approach; simplification and acceleration of the procedure. Copa-Cogeca welcomes the fact the paper examines such a wide range of topics and has called for this. Copa-Cogeca believes that improvements must be made to this policy to make it more effective, with increased funding.

Chairman of Copa-Cogeca Working Party on Promotion Policy Mr Jochum insisted “Simplification of administrative procedures should be one of the major focuses of the reform. It must also highlight the high production standards which European agricultural products must comply with (production hygiene, plant health, animal health and welfare, pesticide residue control, veterinary medicine and additives and environmental standards). Furthermore, it should draw attention to the quality schemes  in force in the EU”.