As from 14 December 2019, Regulation (EU) 2017/625 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2017 on official controls and other official activities performed to ensure the application of food and feed law, rules on animal health and welfare, plant health and plant protection products is supposed to apply in full.
In this connection:
1.Is the Commission monitoring the implementation of this regulation in the Member States?
2.Which Member States have fully complied with the requirements laid down in Article 167 of Regulation 2017/625 and have adapted their national legislation, and at what stage are the other Member States?
A: Ms Kyriakides on behalf of the European Commission
1. The Commission performs controls, including audits, in Member States to verify the implementation of EU food safety legislation, including Regulation (EU) 2017/625[1]. Despite the restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the Commission carried out 160 controls in Member States on covering the different areas in the scope of Regulation (EU) 2017/625. More information on the work programmes for such controls is available on the Commission’s website[2].
The Member States are to ensure that their competent authorities perform official controls based on multi-annual national control plans and provide an annual report to the Commission. The Commission produces an annual report on the operation of official controls in the Member States. More information on Commission controls[3] and on annual reports[4] is available on the Commission’s website (the report on 2019 and 2020 will be published shortly).
2. Regulation (EU) 2017/625 is largely based on the repealed Regulation (EC) No 882/2004[5] and on Directive 97/78/EC[6], which were well implemented by Member States. As Regulation (EU) 2017/625 is directly applicable in the Member States, the adjustments needed in national legislation were very limited and can be found in the abovementioned reports on Commission controls.
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