The thirteenth meeting of CEUREG FORUM was organised in Poznan, Poland.

CEUREG FORUM participants: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Republic of Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic and Slovenia.

The CEUREG FORUM meeting took place according to the Agenda (see enclosed). Participating European Union Member States (EU MSs) from the CEUREG region, the European Commission and industry representatives discussed the future PPPs authorisation system established by the proposed Regulation (Proposal for a Regulation concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market which will revise Directive 91/414/EEC, further called the new PPPs Regulation), especially the possible impact on the regulatory capacity and availability of plant protection products. Other topics discussed included:

• pesticide statistics
• GEP certification systems and efficacy testing
• Globally Harmonised System for Classification and Labelling (GHS)
• data protection
• parallel imports and their inspection and control
• counterfeit products and illegal trade

Participants from regulatory bodies of the CEUREG countries agreed on the following conclusions and recommendations:

1. Implementation of the Framework Directive on Sustainable Use of Pesticides (further called the Framework Directive) and creation of National Action Plans should take into account that the use of PPPs in Central-Eastern Europe is lower than in the old member states and the risk reduction targets shall not affect the availability of chemical protection where it is necessary to ensure sufficient plant production quality and quantity.
2. The new PPPs Regulation is to be applied beginning in spring of 2011. Until that time the interpretation of most provisions should be clarified, particularly the application of the zonal mutual recognition system. Because the agro-ecological conditions are much diversified within the Central and South zones, a PPP evaluation conducted by a Reference MS should take into account comments of other Accepting MSs regarding all the diverse conditions within the zone.
3. The aim of the new PPPs Regulation and Framework Directive is to decrease the risk caused by pesticides, but not to substitute traditional plant protection technologies with biotechnological ones (e.g. GM crops),which can also cause some environmental and social problems.
4. All MSs should adopt GEP recognition system soon to assure sufficient quality of registration trials used under the Mutual Recognition.
5. Newly accessing countries (e.g. Serbia) do not have access to the confidential part of DARs which creates an obstacle to harmonisation efforts towards future EU accession.
6. It is desirable that the European Commission creates a working group for all issues connected to pesticide controls. Its tasks will include promoting the exchange of experiences, proposing legal solutions, analysing and commenting on the EU documents and providing proposals and initiatives in the area of illegal trade and counterfeited products.
7. Countries are expected to provide reliable and high quality data on pesticide sales and use to the EU database as the precondition of the progress monitoring of National Action Plans. CEUREG countries propose to form a working group to develop tools to use  risk indicators. The CEUREG countries need the EC support with respect to developing the pesticide risk  indicators.
8. The Central Zone EU Member States of the CEUREG region are to start discussion on data requirements for the zonal dossier and to produce basic guidelines for the industry in this respect before March 2010.

Following the conclusions of the discussion, the European Commission is urged by the participating EU MSs to:

1. Support traceability of PPPs by legal harmonization of requirements on data and documents accompanying re-packed products in the distribution chain.
2. Prepare guidelines on assessing identicality of parallely imported PPPs.

The European Commission informed the CEUREG Forum participants about a workshop on the zonal mutual recognition, which will be held in January 2010 in Germany. The MSs were also invited to nominate experts for the workshop on re-registration issues organized in Vilnius.

ECPA provided information on the guidelines prepared for the registration authorities to simplify the communication with applicants.

Documents from the previous CEUREG meetings will be made available on the new CEUREG Forum web page.

Topics proposed for the next CEUREG meeting included: border line cases and basic substances, new PPPs Regulation and related legal documents – stage of progress, risk indicators as a measure of progress in implementing sustainable use of pesticides, any activities taking place between the CEUREG Forums.

The Chairman, Mr. Josef Svaricek introduced Brno, the venue of the next CEUREG Forum in 2010.

Adopted in Poznan, 16 October 2009