Food Law News - EU - 1997
30 June 1997: PESTICIDE RESIDUES - New Amending Directive Adopted
Press Release (PRES/97/210), 30 June 1997
Pesticide Residues - New Amending Directive Adopted
At the Agriculture Council meeting (Luxembourg, 23, 24 and 25 June 1997), the Council adopted by a qualified majority (with the German delegation voting against) a directive amending current Community legislation fixing the maximum levels for pesticide residues in a lot of categories of food: fruit and vegetables, cereals, and foodstuffs of animal and plant origin.
The main aims of the Directive are to:
- extend the scope of existing legislation to dried and processed products, etc.,
- institute a rapid conciliation procedure in the case of difficulties in intra-Community trade owing to the absence of harmonized maximum residue levels,
- institute a Community programme of coordinated monitoring,
- institute use of a regulatory committee to set harmonized maximum levels instead of the Council procedure.
This proposal had been referred to the Council in June 1995. Subject to the Opinion of the European Parliament, the Permanent Representatives Committee had reached political agreement on the proposal in December 1995. The European Parliament adopted its Opinion at its September 1996 plenary. In the light of that Opinion, the Commission submitted an amended proposal to the Council in February 1997.
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