The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development adopted a report by Petros KOKKALIS (The Left, EL) on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on statistics on agricultural input and output and repealing Regulations (EC) No 1165/2008, (EC) No 543/2009, (EC) No 1185/2009 and Council Directive 96/16/EC.
As a reminder, European statistics on agricultural inputs and outputs are currently collected, produced and disseminated on the basis of a number of legal acts. This structure does not provide proper consistency across the individual statistical domains, nor does it promote an integrated approach towards the development, production and dissemination of agricultural statistics designed to cover the economic, social and environmental facets of agriculture.
The proposed Regulation should replace those legal acts for the purposes of harmonisation and comparability of information, and to ensure consistency and coordination across European agricultural statistics, facilitate the integration and streamlining of the corresponding statistical processes, and enable a more holistic approach.
The committee responsible recommended that the European Parliament's position adopted at first reading under the ordinary legislative procedure should amend the proposal as follows:
Subject matter
Members proposed that the Regulation should seek to establish an integrated framework for aggregated European statistics related to the inputs and outputs of agricultural activities, as well as the intermediate use of such output within agriculture and its collection and industrial processing.
Collection of data
The data needed to compile statistics should be collected in a manner with the least costs and administrative burden on respondents, including farmers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and Member States. It is therefore necessary to maximise the use of existing data sources, increase synergies and efficiency between existing data sources and optimise the data collection methods used. Where possible owners of sources of the required data could be identified, it should be ensured that data can be used for statistics in full compliance with the private rights of the identifiable individuals and data ownership specified in implementing acts.
The report stressed that the collection of the detailed data sets should not impose significant additional costs resulting in a disproportionate and unjustified burden on agricultural holdings and on Member States.
In addition, an operational and transparent system for the regular collection of statistical data on pesticide use and other chemicals inputs relied on in agriculture should be established.
Publication of data
The data collected on the topics such as crop areas, statistics on nutrients, pesticides, veterinary medicinal products and antibiotics in animal feed, biocidal products, should be actively disseminated by the Commission (Eurostat) via internet, free of charge, at the following level of detail:
(i) per active substance; (ii) per plant protection, biocidal, veterinary medicinal and fertiliser product; (iii) per crop and animal species; (iv) per year.
Regular data requirements
Members proposed an amendment which would improve available statistics and market transparency on fertilizer prices.
Ad hoc data requirements
Given that Member States need sufficient time to allocate resources to begin a new ad hoc data collection, Members proposed that there should be a minimum of five years between each ad hoc data collection.
Review
The Commission should review this Regulation 30 months after the date of its entry into force. During the first review, the Commission should assess in particular whether and why there are data gaps and deficiencies in the data collected limiting the ability of public authorities to assess progress towards sustainable agriculture, including data relating to the use of plant protection, biocidal and veterinary medicinal products.