Modernising EU Food & Feed Safety Rules: A Chance to Deliver for Farmers and for Europe
23 February 2026, EU: Europe’s farmers are being asked to meet bigger sustainability and competitiveness demands than ever before yet their toolbox continues to shrink. The European Commission’s Food and Feed Safety Omnibus offers a rare and much-needed opportunity to address long-standing barriers in the authorisation system and ensure help farmers access safe, effective crop protection solutions.
If implemented well, this reform can streamline procedures, cut unnecessary duplication and strengthen innovation all while fully preserving Europe’s high safety standards.
It’s about changing the process, not changing protection.
From Bottlenecks to Better Access
Today’s regulatory procedures have become slow, resource-intensive and increasingly unfit for purpose. The Commission recently confirmed that around 200 active substance renewals are in progress 1, with many stuck in the pipeline for more than five years and some for over a decade. These delays restrict access to essential tools and slow down innovation at a time when farmers urgently need a full and diverse toolbox.
The Omnibus introduces important and constructive steps to simplify Regulation (EC) 1107/2009 by:
- Reducing procedural inefficiencies
- Making approvals and renewals more proportionate
- Strengthening mutual recognition and consistency across Member States
- Introducing a clearer, futureproof definition of biopesticides
- Enabling provisional authorisations that offer farmers earlier access to innovative solutions
- Strengthening timelines, predictability and accountability across the process.
These reforms can accelerate access to tools without compromising safety, provided the framework continues to rely on science-based, risk-focused assessment.
Competitiveness: Keeping Europe an Attractive Place for Innovation
Regulatory simplification should enhance, not weaken, the competitiveness of European agriculture and the EU’s innovation ecosystem. Yet Europe’s current landscape has become increasingly unpredictable and fragmented, discouraging investment in new crop protection technologies.
Concerns are particularly focused on proposed changes to data protection and data exclusivity (Articles 14, 59 and related provisions). Calculating protection based on the “first authorisation,” for instance, could significantly shorten the period of effective protection in later authorising Member States creating distortions and weakening incentives to generate high-quality data. Visual Timelines Data Protection
Competitiveness also relies on trade-consistent, risk-based regulatory outcomes. Unilateral EU requirements that diverge from international standards risk disrupting supply chains.Hazard-based import tolerance decisions would mark a major departure from established risk-based methods, raising costs, undermining supply continuity and putting upward pressure on prices, without providing any additional consumer protection.
Finally, coherence between active substance approvals (Regulation 1107/2009) and maximum residue level decisions (Regulation 396/2005) is critical. Without alignment, new bottlenecks will emerge, preventing authorised products from reaching the market efficiently.
Official Controls: Enforcement Must Match Ambition
A modernised regulatory framework can only succeed if it is backed by strong, consistent enforcement. Illegal and counterfeit products distort markets, undermine responsible operators, and weaken trust in the system.
To safeguard fairness and effectiveness, the Omnibus should strengthen and harmonise enforcement tools across the EU, including:
- effective control of products in transit
- closing loopholes linked to parallel trade (Article 52)
- dissuasive penalties that ensure compliance
- ensuring the Official Controls Regulation (EU) 2017/625 is fully equipped to monitor online sales, in line with the Digital Services Act (EU) 2022/2065
Without consistent enforcement, even a well-designed framework cannot deliver its intended benefits for farmers, consumers, or innovators.
A Once-in-a-Decade Opportunity
The Food and Feed Safety Omnibus is more than a technical update. Done right, it is a strategic opportunity for the EU to turn simplification into reality, ensuring farmers have the tools they need to deliver sustainable, secure food production in a changing world in a timely fashion.
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