Directive 2024/1438 - Amendment of Council Directives 2001/110/EC relating to honey, 2001/112/EC relating to fruit juices and certain similar products intended for human consumption, 2001/113/EC relating to fruit jams, jellies and marmalades and sweetened chestnut purée intended for human consumption, and 2001/114/EC relating to certain partly or wholly dehydrated preserved milk for human consumption

Official Journal

of the European Union

EN

L series

2024/1438

24.5.2024

In line with the objectives set out in the Commission Communication of 11 December 2019 on ‘The European Green Deal’, the Commission adopted the Commission Communication of 20 May 2020 entitled ‘A Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system’ (‘Farm to Fork Strategy’), where it announced measures for a healthier and more sustainable Union food system. By means of those measures, the Commission seeks, inter alia, to stimulate product reformulation in the case of foods high in sugars and to facilitate the shift to healthy and sustainable diets. Furthermore, in order to empower consumers to make informed, healthy and sustainable food choices, the Commission announced a possible extension of the mandatory origin or provenance indications to certain products, while fully taking into account impacts on the internal market.

Council Directive 2001/110/EC (3) lays down definitions, names, common rules on composition, and quality and labelling requirements for honey.

In the light of the close link between the quality of honey and its origin and the need to avoid consumers being misled with regard to the quality of the product, Directive 2001/110/EC lays down rules on the labelling of the origin for the purposes of indicating where the honey has been harvested. In particular, Article 2, point 4, of that Directive requires the country or countries of origin where the honey has been harvested to be indicated on the label and provides that, if honey originates in more than one Member State or third country, the mandatory indication of the countries of origin can be replaced by one of the following, as appropriate: ‘blend of EU honeys’, ‘blend of non EU honeys’, ‘blend of EU and non-EU honeys’. The different rules adopted on that basis by Member States might have misled consumers and might have hindered the functioning of the internal market.

Given the particular interest shown by consumers in the geographical origin of honey, in the light of the Farm to Fork Strategy’s objective of empowering consumers in making informed choices, including with regard to the origin of their food, and in the interest of preserving the efficient functioning of the internal market throughout the Union through harmonisation of the labelling rules, it is appropriate to revise the rules for honey origin labelling. This Directive should require, as a standard rule, that the country or countries of origin be indicated on the label in descending order together with the percentage of each origin, in the case of blends, with a tolerance of 5 % for each individual share within the blend, calculated on the basis of the operator’s traceability documentation.

However, in order to ensure a certain degree of flexibility, Member...