Agricultural products on the internal market and in third countries: information provision and promotion measures

The Council held a policy debate on the proposal for a regulation on information provision and promotion measures for agricultural products on the internal market and in third countries.

Some Member States considered as real added value to maintain information and promotion measures on the internal market; on the contrary, for some others promotion should focus on foreign countries to avoid a distortion of competition into the EU.

The main issues raised during the debate concerned the following:

• the regret that the proposal does not envisage the co-financing of member states pointing out that SMEs and producer organisations would be affected and would not have the financial capability to engage in such actions;
• the need to better involve Member States in the whole process of selecting promotion programmes;
• the need to extend the list of products covered by the measures;
• the need to closely check use of the budget for information and promotion.