Stakeholder participation and stakeholder protest: On the planned revision of the EU Organic regulation

Summary

POSTER
In Germany organic stakeholders largely reject the draft of the revised EU Organic regulation. This was evident at a workshop held within the framework of the ORGAP project, which brought together leading representatives of the organic sector in March 2006. The objective of the workshop was to develop indicators on the evaluation of the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming. The concerns voiced by stakeholders on the revision of the regulation were so strong that we consider it appropriate to i) report them and ii) to put them into perspective as a contribution to further discussion. This is the objective of this poster.
MANUSCRIPT FOR THE POSTER PRESENTATION (TRANSLATED AND REVISED FROM http://orgprints.org/8515)
Shortly before Christmas of last year, the Commission of the European Union (EU) published the draft of a new EU Organic Regulation. This draft proposal, which is intended to replace Council Regulation (EEC) 2092/91 and supplementary regulations, has provoked substantial criticism from the German organic sector. Thus the German farmers’ union (Deutscher Bauernverband, DBV) spoke of the “massive undermining of consumer protection” which could result from provisions in the draft. The German Federation of the Organic Food Industry (Bund Ökologische Lebensmittelwirtschaft, BÖLW) as the umbrella organization of organic producers, processors and traders rejects the present draft revision outright.
The broad rejection of the draft replacement regulation was confirmed at a workshop held in the framework of the EU ORGAP project, which brought together leading representatives of the German organic sector on March 30, 2006 in Berlin. The ORGAP (Evaluation of the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming) research project is of special interest in connection with the new EU Organic Regulation, since the draft regulation explicitly (and quite unusually) makes specific reference to this project: its results will be drawn upon at a later stage in order to draft the detailed implementation provisions for the regulation. The methodological approach of the ORGAP research project places a very strong emphasis on stakeholder integration.