2025 was a year of political awakening where both the European Commission and the European Parliament agreed to accelerate access to biocontrol for European farmers which up-to-now is still very slow and farmers are facing a significant shortage of effective tools to safeguard their crops against pests and diseases, as chemical plant protection products are being phased out very rapidly.
On 16 December, the European Commission released the Food and Feed Simplification Omnibus package with multiple measures to accelerate biocontrol through targeted amendments to Regulation EC 1107/2009, such as the implementation of measures to use the existing resources at the Member States level more efficiently by:
- Empoweering EFSA to take a leading role and support the evaluations
- Faster approval and authorization procedures
- Introducing tacit mutual recognition when agreed deadlines are exceeded (after 120 days)
- Amending the renewal system to provide unlimited approval periods
- Allowing Member States to grant provisional authorization of products containing NAS
- Adopting a single EU zone for biocontrol and low-risk products
The approval and entry into force of these measures will take 1 to 2 years, after revision by the European Parliament and the Agrifish Council of Ministers of Agriculture and Fisheries and final approval. Drawing up an entirely new fit-for-purpose regulatory framework for biocontrol products and getting it voted could take up to a decade. Therefore, we considered that targeted amendments to Regulation EC 1107/2009 is the fastest route to be followed.
