PURPOSE: to adopt a targeted revision of the EU's phytosanitary policy, which improves the way the EU fights plant pests, ensures the safety of plants entering the EU and simplifies procedures.
LEGISLATIVE ACT: Regulation (EU) 2024/3115 of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) 2016/2031 as regards multiannual survey programmes, notifications concerning the presence of regulated non-quarantine pests, temporary derogations from import prohibitions and special import requirements and establishment of procedures for granting them, temporary import requirements for high-risk plants, plant products and other objects, the establishment of procedures for the listing of high-risk plants, the content of phytosanitary certificates and the use of plant passports, and as regards certain reporting requirements for demarcated areas and surveys of pests and amending Regulation (EU) 2017/625 as regards certain notifications of non-compliance.
CONTENT: this revision aims to improve and streamline the application and enforcement of Regulation (EU) 2016/2031, also known as plant health legislation.
More specifically, the revised regulation aims to:
- improve procedures for identifying and listing high-risk plants, and for submitting and examining requests for temporary derogations from import obligations coming from non-EU countries;
- clarify measures for pests that qualify as quarantine pests, but which have not yet been fully assessed ;
- rationalise and simplify reporting obligations, thanks to increased digitalisation; this will help cut red tape for the competent authorities, as well as for operators.
Plant health emergency team
The regulation creates a Union Plant Health Emergency Team composed of experts with the purpose of providing Member States, upon their request, with urgent assistance on the measures to be taken concerning new outbreaks of Union quarantine pests.
In well-justified cases, the Team may also provide urgent assistance to third countries bordering the Union territory or presenting an imminent phytosanitary risk for that territory, upon the request by one or more Member States and of the third country concerned, concerning the outbreaks in their territories of Union quarantine pests and pests.
Multiannual survey programmes
In order to reduce the administrative burden on the competent authorities, multiannual survey programmes will be established for a period of between five and ten years. These programmes will be reviewed and updated on the basis of the applicable regulations and the phytosanitary situation of the territory concerned. Each Member State will have to notify, at the request of the Commission, its multiannual survey programmes to the Commission and to the other Member States. These notifications will be transmitted by means of an electronic notification system.
Contingency plans
Contingency plans may be combined for multiple priority pests with similar biology and range of host species. In those cases, the contingency plan will consist of a general part common to all priority pests covered by it and of specific parts for each priority pest concerned. Similarly, Member States may cooperate to synchronise contingency plans for certain species.
Plant passports
The Commission may, by means of implementing acts, set out provisions:
(a) determining the plants, plant products and other objects which, by way of derogation, may be moved within the Union with a plant passport associated with them in a way other than that of a physical attachment, due to their size, shape or way of packaging that make that attachment impossible or very difficult; and
(b) providing for rules to ensure that the plant passport concerned, although not attached, still refers to the respective plants, plant products and other objects.
The Commission will establish an electronic system for the submission of notifications and reports by the Member States.
ENTRY INTO FORCE: 5.1.2025.
APPLICATION: from 6.7.2026.