Report from the Commission on the overall operation of official controls in the Member States on food safety, animal health and animal welfare, and plant health

Article 44 (1) of Regulation (EC) No 882/2004 (Feed and Food Controls Regulation) requires Member States to submit to the Commission each year a report on the implementation of their multi-annual national control plans established in compliance with Article 41 of that Regulation. The reports should contain:

- details of amendments to multi-annual national control plans, to take into account among other factors, changes in legislation, new diseases or risk factors, new science, the results of past controls and significant organisational changes;
- the results of controls and audits carried out in the previous year under the national control plan;
- the type and number of cases of non-compliance identified through the controls;
- actions to ensure effective implementation of the national control plan, including enforcement actions and their results.

Article 44 (4) and (6) of the Regulation require the Commission to establish and submit to the European Parliament and Council an annual report on the overall operation of controls in the Member States in the light of the annual reports submitted by the national authorities,
EU audits and inspections carried out in the Member States,
and any other relevant information.

The Commission submitted its first report to the European Parliament and the Council in August 2010. The main purpose of that report was to provide a first screening of the data and information on official controls contained in the first annual reports from the Member States. It also gave a summary of results of EU audits and inspections. It was discussed by Member States in the Standing Committee of the Food Chain and Animal Health in September 2010. The Committees on the Environment and on Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the European Parliament, discussed it in October 2010.

The Commission has begun discussions with the Member States on the issues raised in the first report, and specifically on how the collection and handling of data on official controls can be streamlined and standardised.

This second report takes a somewhat different approach from the first. It aims to give an overview of EU food safety controls that is not confined to the latest year for which annual reports are available from all Member States but draws on the latest information from all three main sources of information on controls to give as up to date an account as possible of how the EU control system is functioning.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)122: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:122:FIN

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