The new proposal focuses on three objectives:

• maintaining consumer confidence, by strengthening rules on production, in line with consumer concerns and reinforcing and improving the control system, so that European consumers have better guarantees on organic products in the EU.
  
  
  
  
• maintaining producers´ confidence in the system by applying the same production rules throughout the EU, thereby guaranteeing fair competition for organic producers and uniformly high standards. European farmers, producers and retailers will have access to a larger market, both within and outside the EU.
  
  
  
  
• removing obstacles to developing organic farming in the EU. These include complex, unclear legislation; technical and structural obstacles to switching to organic production or maintaining organic methods; high certification costs and the administrative burden. It will be easier to join the EU´s organic scheme.

The background:

Over the last 10 years, the EU organic market has grown four times in size and organic products marketed in the EU are increasingly diverse, including processed products and imports from non-EU countries.

In 2013, the Commission carried a public consultation on the future of organic farming, which attracted major interest from the public and stakeholders. The results showed a demand for stricter and for harmonized rules at EU level: 74 % of all respondents requested European organic standard to be strengthened and 86% wished organic rules to be uniform across the EU. More than half of the interviewees also strongly required to improve the European control system for organic products. As the organic market relies on consumer confidence, fraud can indeed have a very detrimental effect.

The event:

- press conference at the end of the midday briefing with Dacian Cioloş, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

- IP and memo will be available on the day.

- a technical briefing with experts from DG AGRI will also be organized (still to be confirmed).

• Available on EbS

The sources:

Information on organic farming in the EU and the 2013 public consultation http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/index_en.htm

Information on Commissioner Cioloş: http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/ciolos/