In September 2025, I highlighted in a speech at the Crop Protection Regulatory Conference that the political tone in Brussels around the pressures facing European farmers was beginning to change. Almost 12 months later, that shift has become even more apparent. But rhetoric alone changes nothing until it is translated into law.
The Food and Feed Safety Simplification Omnibus (Omnibus X), tabled by the Commission in December 2025 as part of its Vision for Agriculture and Food, is a test of whether the new tone does translate into new law. Yet, it is also one of the clearest opportunities to show that simplification and high standards are not in conflict.
Can Brussels cut genuine red tape for farmers while keeping food safety intact? If the proposals hold up through Parliament and the Council this autumn, they will earn some trust. If they do not, every future pledge to cut bureaucracy will be read as spin rather than reform.
Simplification is easy to promise and hard to deliver without gutting standards. That tension will ultimately decide whether the change we have seen over the past eighteen months is real.
Priorities guiding Omnibus X talks
As the European Parliament’s rapporteur, I believe three priorities should guide our work on Omnibus X as part of the EU’s wider simplification agenda. First, we must genuinely reduce burdens, not simply relocate them. Delegating too much detail to secondary legislation or implementing measures would risk recreating uncertainty under a different name.
Second, we must protect the elements of the proposal that affect farmers’ daily access to essential tools, particularly plant protection products and biocontrol solutions.
Third, we need to maintain momentum. Some 1,500 amendments have been tabled in response to the draft report published in June, and we are working towards a joint AGRI-ENVI committee vote in October.
Such a technical file cannot be written well in isolation. Regulators understand risk assessment, industry what is realistic to develop and authorise, and farmers what happens in the field.
Parliament must also hear civil society’s legitimate concerns, particularly over pesticide use, and turn these perspectives into workable legislation without weakening the safety guarantees that make EU food trusted worldwide.
Simplification and high standards are not opposites. The confusion often arises because procedure and substance are treated as though they were the same thing. Many of the changes proposed in the Omnibus are procedural. One example is the move away from fixed periodic reassessments for lower-risk active substances while explicitly retaining risk-based reviews for hazardous ones.
This does not lower the bar. It allows scientific resources to be directed towards areas where the risk actually exists. The same principle applies to official controls and certain procedures concerning feed additives.
I will be far more cautious about any proposal affecting the substantive safety criteria themselves. Those criteria must remain untouched. Simplification should shorten queues and reduce paperwork, but it must never shortcut the science.
A climate-ready regulatory framework for European agriculture
A more workable regulatory system is particularly important because farmers are being asked to adapt to more volatile pests and diseases, often linked to a changing climate, at exactly the moment when the toolbox available to them is narrowing. Active substances are being withdrawn faster than new conventional or biocontrol alternatives are being authorised.
Effective resistance management also requires farmers to rotate between different modes of action. That becomes increasingly difficult when the available choices are limited. The Omnibus should accelerate the authorisation of biocontrol solutions and improve support for minor uses so that farmers, particularly those working in specialty and mountain agriculture, are not left without workable alternatives.
A real risk to Europe’s food security
The slowdown in approvals of new active substances over the past decade, combined with continued withdrawals, should be taken seriously. If this gap widens, it will no longer be a matter of farmer convenience. It will affect the EU’s capacity to grow its own food, control certain pests and diseases, and remain competitive with producers operating under lighter rules.
Speeding up the authorisation of alternatives, such as biocontrol and low-risk products, is necessary, but it will only make a difference if the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and Member State authorities have adequate resources. Otherwise, we will simply move the bottleneck rather than remove it.
The role of Omnibus X in data protection and mutual recognition
The Omnibus must also establish a fair and predictable approach to data protection. Data protection exists for a good reason: someone must fund the studies that keep our safety system credible, and that investment deserves protection.
Problems arise, however, when rules designed with large first-movers in mind prevent smaller post-patent companies from bringing equivalent or generic-type products to market after the original protection period has genuinely expired. This reduces competition and can keep prices for farmers artificially high.
We need a clear and proportionate line. Genuinely new data and genuinely new risk assessments should be protected, but procedural ambiguity must not be allowed to extend protection indefinitely. Predictability must work both for the innovator and for the competitor waiting to enter the market fairly.
Questions surrounding mutual recognition are equally important. These details may sound technical, but they determine whether a product authorised in one Member State can reach a farmer in another without months of duplicated assessment.
Mutual recognition is intended to prevent such duplication. In practice, it works unevenly, and companies often have to repeat essentially the same procedure country by country. For farmers in border regions, this is not an abstract issue. A product available just across the border in Austria or Italy may take far longer to become available to them at home.
Strengthening genuine mutual recognition through clear deadlines and effective dispute mechanisms is one of the most concrete ways in which the Omnibus can support the internal market.
The (legislative) road ahead
Ireland’s Presidency of the Council during the second half of 2026 comes at a useful moment. Its programme explicitly places simplification and the Single Market roadmap at the centre of its agenda, giving the Presidency both the mandate and credibility to push Member States towards a general approach rather than allowing the file to drift.
By the end of 2026, Parliament should have adopted its position following the October AGRI-ENVI vote, while the Council should have reached a general approach sufficiently close to Parliament’s position to allow trilogues to begin in early 2027.
The true measure of success will not be the votes themselves, but what the resulting positions contain: faster and more predictable authorisation pathways for biocontrol, a functioning mutual recognition mechanism, and administrative procedures that national authorities can implement without creating new bottlenecks.
Anything less would mean that we simplified the law, but not the reality farmers face.
