Biostimulants
Laws & regulations

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The EU is adopting new rules for placing fertilising products on the EU market. The Council adopted a regulation which harmonises the requirements for fertilisers produced from phosphate minerals and from organic or secondary raw materials in the EU, opening up new possibilities for their production and marketing on a large scale. The regulation sets harmonised limits for a range of contaminants, such as cadmium, contained in mineral fertilisers.
 
These new rules will ensure that only fertilisers that meet high quality and safety EU-wide requirements and standards can be sold freely across the EU. The contaminants in EU phosphate fertilising products, such as cadmium, can potentially pose a risk to human, animal or plant health, to safety or to the environment and for this reason, the content of such contaminants was limited according to the new rules. The new rules will boost the production and use of phosphate fertilizers with low cadmium content and of organic fertilisers and will provide a greater choice to farmers oriented towards a more environment-friendly agriculture.
Niculae BADALAU, Romanian Minister of economy

According to the regulation, EU fertilising products bearing the "CE marking" will have to fulfil certain requirements to benefit from free circulation in the EU's internal market. These include obligatory maximum contaminant levels, the use of defined component material categories and labelling requirements.
Manufacturers of fertilisers that do not bear the CE marking will still have the possibility of placing them on their national market.
The new regulation, which replaces the previous 2003 fertilisers regulation, covers all types of fertilisers (mineral, organic, soil improvers, growing matters, etc.).

Next steps
The regulation still has to be signed and published in the Official Journal of the EU. It will enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication. It will start applying three years from its entry into force.

Background
The Commission presented its proposal in March 2016 as part of the EU's circular economy action plan. One of its main objectives is to encourage large scale fertiliser production from domestic organic or secondary raw materials in line with the circular economy model, by transforming waste into nutrients for crops.

Link to REGULATION (EU) 2019/1009 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL
of 5 June 2019
laying down rules on the making available on the market of EU fertilising products and amending Regulations (EC) No 1069/2009 and (EC) No 1107/2009 and repealing Regulation (EC) No 2003/2003

Article 47
Amendments to Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009
Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 is amended as follows:
(1)in Article 2(1), point (b) is replaced by the following:
‘(b)influencing the life processes of plants, such as substances influencing their growth, other than as a nutrient or a plant biostimulant;’;
(2)in Article 3, the following point is added:
‘34.“plant biostimulant” means a product stimulating plant nutrition processes independently of the product’s nutrient content with the sole aim of improving one or more of the following characteristics of the plant or the plant rhizosphere:
(a) nutrient use efficiency;
(b) tolerance to abiotic stress;
(c) quality traits;
(d) availability of confined nutrients in soil or rhizosphere.’
(...)

Note well: this page is built to let you have some info about fertilizers' regulation. It's not to be intended as legal advice. Please refer to EU Regulation and to specific consultancy agency (such as Silc Fertilizzanti) for assistance.

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