Thank you, thank you very much.
And thank you very much for showing interest.
As you know, food safety is central to my mandate as European Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare.
We have a very extensive and robust body of legislation in this area to safeguard animal health and welfare, but also when it comes to plant health and food safety. All of this is designed with one notion in mind: to protect the health of EU citizens.
As a result, we can be proud that Europe claims the highest food safety and quality standards around the world. And we all know that Europe is also a hub of food exports. Europe is also a continent with a very high level of food sovereignty.
On the other hand, we also see that agri-food imports account for almost EUR 160 billion a year.
And we have a robust system of official controls to ensure that imports also comply with our very high standards.
Member States authorities are playing a crucial role at our borders to make sure that only safe products are reaching our consumers.
The reason why we have organised this press point is the fact that today we held the second implementation dialogue of the year related to this area.
The topic today while meeting stakeholder - agri-food companies, NGOs, etc... - was actually to discuss import controls.
I think that we have been able to look not only at the challenges but also the potential solutions to improve even further the controls and the enforcement of our rules.
I think we got some very good ideas: how to reduce administrative burden while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of our controls - and ensuring very high safety standards all the way, when entering the internal market.
I already have some announcements to make on how we want to improve the functionning of the controls system.
Not only because of the stakeholder dialogue and impletementation dialogue we had - It has been a reflexion of ours since we have started working on the Vision for Agriculture and Food.
In January, as a first step, we will reinforce significantly the level of controls both in the EU and outside. The framework to deliver this will be the creation of a special Task Force on import controls where we want to gather even closer the authorities of the Member States together with our own experts, while also seeing how to make our controls more effective.
We have been discussing this topic also with our farmer community - and you have already seen the direction of the policy that we want to create during this mandate in the Vision for Agriculture and Food.
So that we make sure our farmers are not faced with international competition that is unfair, in the sense that imports should face the exact same rules and requirements our farmers have to face when they are producing food, plants or animals on the EU market.
In this mandate, we will want to do much more to reinforce these controls.
First of all, we aim at better alignment of our standards with third countries. In this regard, what was particularly highlighted in the Vision was the topics relared to pesticides.
At our farmers request, and supported by a number of Member States, we committed to a principle which is not to allow the most hazardous pesticides – which are banned in the EU – back into the EU through imported products.
This strengthened reciprocity will guarantee that the EUs ambitious standards do not create a competitive disadvantage for our farmers and the agri-food sector, while responding to consumers expectations.
The Commission has already launched an impact assessment to see how this principle can be fully implemented and operationalised, taking into account our competitive position and potential trade implications.
In the meantime, we will work immediately to update our rules on allowing imports of products with traces of particularly hazardous pesticides that are banned in the EU, following recently updated international standards
If these pesticides are not allowed in the EU for reasons related to health protection in Europe, they should not be found as residues in our food.
When it comes to import controls, and that is my second point, I plan to step up our already very thorough work.
We need to act to improve our level of audits directly on the ground in third countries.
This is why the Commission will increase its export related audits in non-EU countries by 50% over the next 2 years - starting from 1 January 2026.
We will step up our monitoring of non-compliant commodities and countries and adapt the frequency of our checks to those accordingly.
Thirdly, we need to strenghten the level of controls within the EU, namely at our main entry points - which are the sea ports.
In this regard, we will perform a higher number of checks in Member States, to ensure controls at the borders comply fully with EU standards. We will also support these Member States to properly carry out these checks.
With these import controls reinforced to be strong and effective, we want to send a very clear message:
For our own food safety framework, these are essential steps to be made. They are steps we are ready to make, steps that are going to be taken immediately.
I hope hat with this, we are taking our food safety to the next level.
