The European Commission (EC) has adopted a Regulation laying down detailed rules of application for the work programmes of operators’ organisations in the olive sector.

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It sets requirements for the approval of these organisations and determines the activities in their programmes that can be financed. The aim is to enable these operators to be actively engaged in the sector’s future.


The Council Regulation adopted in July 2001, extending the period of validity of the aid scheme and quality strategy for olive oil, already reserved for these operators a key role in orienting the whole sector to a quality approach. To this end, it gave Member States the possibility from 1 November 2002 of financing their organisations’ programmes by means of a deduction from the production aid.


Taking a broad view of what quality entails that covers the whole chain of operations from growing the olives themselves to the sale of olive oil and table olives ready to be used by the consumer, the Regulation groups the activities eligible for Community financing into four fields: market follow-up and administrative management in the sector; improving the environmental impact of olive-growing; improving production quality; traceability, certification and quality protection for olive oil and table olives.


The new Regulation also sets minimum approval requirements for producer organisations and associations of these, for other operators’ organisations and for interbranch organisations in the sector. To allow a good fit with organisational variations from country to country the text gives Member States some flexibility where the approval rules are concerned.

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A complementary proposal for a Council Regulation recently presented by the EC sets a limit to the production aid deduction that Member States can impose in order to finance the activity programmes of the operators’ organisations. In each Member State this would be 3% of the amount given by multiplying the aid rate by the national guaranteed quantity (GNQ).


With the new Regulation, the EC completes its adoption of a package of measures to implement the quality strategy. These include the recent Regulations adjusting the characteristics of olive oils and the relevant analysis methods and on marketing standards for olive oil.


Member States and sector operators now have a set of regulatory and financial tools designed to orient production to a quality approach that the sector can capitalise on in conjunction with the new Community provisions on information and promotion action for agricultural products on the internal market.