Commission welcomes provisional Trilogue deal on EU Promotion of agricultural products
The European Commission welcomes the fact that a tentative trilogue agreement has been reached between the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament on EU Promotion policy last night, subject to the formal approval by the different institutions. Tonight’s compromise comes less than 5 months after the Commission tabled the legislative proposals last November. The changes would see an increase in EU funding from roughly € 60 million at present to €200m in 2020 – with a view to investing more funding in particular to promotion programmes on third country markets.
Following the trilogue, Commissioner Dacian Cioloș stated yesterday night:
“I am delighted that we have managed to resolve our differences and find a compromise on EU Promotion policy. It has not been easy, and all sides have had to give ground, but I feel that this is a good deal which respects our basic aim of using EU funds more efficiently to promote European agricultural products and the Commission initiative to create a truly EU instrument for promoting a sector with such strong economic potential. This is good news for the agricultural sector in the EU as it will boost our capacity to find new markets in line with our trade strategy and our quality policy, and is therefore good news for EU taxpayers. I believe this is a further example of how EU policy can make a contribution towards jobs and growth. For me, one of the key changes is the new emphasis that we will give to promoting products outside the EU in order to help establish new markets and to more multi-country programmes in order to establish better cooperation & therefore a more genuine European added value. At present, programmes to third countries only represent 30% of the budget, and “multi” programmes 16% - and one of our major aims from this reform is to encourage a larger number of these programmes and reverse the trend.”
