EU: Public consultation on the Fertilising Products Regulation

 

The EU Commission has announced its intention to launch a new public consultation on the Fertilising Products Regulation (EU) 2019/1009.

The regulation has applied since July 2022. It lays down common rules on safety, quality and labelling requirements for CE-marked fertilising products.

The initiative will assess whether the rules are working as intended.

The conditions for making fertilizers available in the internal market have been partially harmonized through Regulation (EC) No 2003/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council, which primarily addresses fertilizers derived from mined or chemically produced inorganic materials. However, there is also a need to utilize recycled or organic materials for fertilizing purposes. To promote their further use, harmonized conditions for making fertilizers from these recycled or organic materials available throughout the entire internal market should be established. This will provide a significant incentive for their increased use, support the development of the circular economy, and enable more resource-efficient nutrient use, while reducing the Union’s dependency on nutrients from third countries. Therefore, the scope of harmonization should be extended to include recycled and organic materials.

Certain products are being used alongside fertilizers to improve nutrient efficiency, which helps reduce the amount of fertilizers used and their environmental impact. To facilitate their free movement within the internal market, harmonization should cover not only fertilizers, which provide nutrients to plants, but also products intended to enhance plants’ nutrient efficiency.

Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishes rules for the accreditation of conformity assessment bodies, provides a framework for market surveillance of products, and sets general principles for the CE marking. This Regulation should apply to products covered by the current Regulation to ensure that products benefiting from the free movement of goods within the Union meet requirements that offer high levels of protection for public interests, such as human, animal, and plant health, safety, and the environment.

To find out more about product compliance in EU, please contact the Product Compliance Institute directly.