EU’s shift to ‘compliance regime’ may hurt Indian organic exports

EU’s shift to ‘compliance regime’ may hurt Indian organic exports

Subject: Economy

Section: Agriculture

Context: The European commission has recently published a draft note with the aim of implementing stringent measures starting in January 2025 regarding the adherence to organic product standards in third countries.

Content:

• Last November, the EU had in Audit report on India had acknowledged that there was an overall structure in place with all the necessary elements for control of organic products, including a sophisticated IT system for supervising the controls and ensuring traceability (APEDA under NPOP is recognized by EU to regulate standards for export of Organic Products).
• However, there are many weaknesses in the supervision and implementation of the controls at various levels. The most significant is that the recent unannounced controls by APEDA as well as the audit team’s own findings show a high degree of noncompliance with the NPOP at producer groups and poor quality of inspections, the report had said.
• This decision comes as a response to the Commission’s observation that certain governments in various countries had relaxed regulations during the Covid19 pandemic, leading to negative effects on the accreditation bodies’ ability to guarantee the compliance of these products.

Reason for Chaos:

• Change of Ecosystem: EU’s regime shift from process certification to product authenticity.

Impact:

• This disruption will merely allow exporters with ‘neo-competency’ to survive in the export market.
• Further, certification costs will jack up in India (which had exported over $ 300 mn of Organic products to EU in 2021-22) if producers’ group have to seek recognition from additional agency that is recognized in EU.

Organic certification : covered in May DPN