Asaja has lodged a complaint with the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, asking him to postpone until 1 January 2028 the obligation to keep electronic records of phytosanitary treatments, as established by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/564.
The farming organization warns that the countryside is not yet prepared to assume this new requirement on a generalized basis and argues that this is not the time to increase either costs or administrative burden on farms that survive “asphyxiated,” since maintaining the current deadlines would cause “legal uncertainty” and “the risk of penalties for those who act in good faith,” as it states in a press release.
Asaja emphasizes that, despite the extension already granted by the European Commission, serious adaptation difficulties persist in thousands of farms. The most serious problems are concentrated among small and medium-sized farms, with fewer technical, economic and management resources, in areas with poor connectivity where limited coverage makes it difficult to use digital tools, and among older farmers, who need more training and support.
These problems are compounded by the risk that this community obligation could be confused with the Digital Record Book of the Holding (CUE). The organization recalls that European regulations only require machine-readable electronic records, without imposing a specific application or a particular national system, and therefore it calls for any IT solution that meets the technical specifications to be accepted, including the use of programs such as Excel.
In addition, Asaja has urged the Government to take advantage of the flexibility offered by European regulation to extend, in Spanish legislation, the reporting deadline. Instead of requiring the record to be made within 30 days after the application of the phytosanitary product, it proposes allowing the data to be added up to 31 January of the following year in which it was used.
At the European level, the organization has asked the Ministry of Agriculture to promote a joint initiative with other Member States and to bring this matter before the next meeting of the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council (Agrifish), under the heading “Other matters” (AOB).
With the aim of strengthening a common position vis-à-vis Brussels, Asaja has announced that it will open talks with its counterpart organizations in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Poland and Romania, to convey a shared position to their respective Governments and to the Community institutions.
Lastly, the organization will call for a clear commitment to postpone this obligation at the meetings it will hold in the coming days with the political parties, ahead of the elections of November 29.