Copa-Cogeca welcomed today new EU Commission plans on future EU promotion policy of agricultural products, claiming they respond to many of our demands, especially the need to improve awareness of the benefits of European agricultural products on domestic and external market.

Copa-Cogeca Secretary-General Pekka Pesonen insisted “Copa-Cogeca has been calling for promotion measures to be stepped up on both domestic and external markets and we are happy to see that the Commission backs our demands. On the internal market, we need to ensure that consumers are better informed about European products, especially the EUs’ high standards of food safety, plant and animal health, animal welfare and environmental protection. Especially since they do not apply to imports and raise production costs significantly for producers. On external markets, there is a need to maintain and boost market shares for European agricultural products and to find new outlets for these products, with more coherence between promotion and EU trade policy”.

Chariman of Copa-Cogeca Working Party on Promotion Policy Christian Jochum insisted “We are also pleased to see that the Commission acknowledges the need for a clearly established European strategy for EU promotion policy that will create in particular greater synergies between stakeholders, administration, institutions.  A better shaped instrument will be more effective  and will benefit EU farmers and cooperatives, helping to ensure that they get a better return from the market”.

He continued “I am pleased to see the Communication includes measures to simplify administrative procedures – a key demand of Copa-Cogeca. The administrative requirements involved in submitting programme proposals and during their implementation are currently excessively complicated and time-consuming, which often causes promotion programmes to be under-used. A simplified instrument will be more attractive to operators. Finally, the list of products covered by the European promotion regime must be limited to agricultural products (Annex I) and products covered by European quality legislation”.