Plant protection products for minor crops

22.4.2016

Question for written answer E-003279-16
to the Commission
Rule 130
Esteban González Pons (PPE)

Minor crops — those grown on relatively small areas of farmland — suffer from a serious problem in that plant protection products to fight pests, disease and weeds are in short supply. The process of authorising plant protection products for these crops must be speeded up therefore. The Commission recently set up an EU Minor Use Coordination Facility (technical secretariat), but endowed it with a limited budget that only allows it to carry out coordination work. This Facility cannot fund directly therefore from its own resources plans for a register of plant protection products for minor crops. The lack of plant protection solutions is one of the main threats to survival of these crops and for this reason the prevalence of slow, complex and costly registration processes should be avoided.

Does the Commission plan to develop further the Coordination Facility’s duties and grant it a bigger budget so as to fund directly plans for a register of minor-crop plant protection products?

Will the Commission urge Member States, and Spain in particular, to speed up the authorisation procedure for plant protection products for minor crops?

Will the Commission work on really simplifying the registration process for minor-crop plant protection products, as laid down in Article 51 of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market?