The draft Regulation is an act implementing the Plant Protection Act (State Gazette (SG) No 61/2014, as amended in SG No 12 of 13 February 2015, amend. SG No 44 of 10 June 2016, amend. SG No 58 of 18 July 2017, amend. SG No 17 of 23 February 2018, amend. SG No 17 of 26 February 2019, amend. SG No 51 of 5 June 2020). The draft was drawn up on the basis of Article 9(4) of the Plant Protection Act and in connection with the introduction of the basic and specific principles of pest management, in order to protect human and animal health and the environment.

 Draft Regulation on integrated production of plants and plant products and control over the integrated production.

The Regulation aims to determine the procedure for and the manner of:
1. integrated production of plants and plant products, by applying the specific principles of integrated pest management;
2. control over the integrated production of plants and plant products;
3. providing consultancy services for integrated pest management and control;
4. registration of farmers engaged in integrated production of plants and plant products.

The text of the draft Regulation has been substantially revised and its articles renumbered, as follows:
• The title of the draft Regulation with which it was notified - “Regulation on the growing of plants and the production of crops using integrated pest management”, is amended as follows: “Regulation on integrated production of plants and plant products and control over the integrated production”. The reason for the amendment is that this title was not discussed in the previous working group, therefore no consensus on the title had been reached. In addition, Article 11(1) of the Plant Protection Act introduces the term “integrated production of plants and plant products”, and in paragraph 4: “The integrated production under paragraph 1 and the control over it shall be carried out under conditions and in accordance with procedures, laid down in the regulation under Article 9(4)“. On the other hand, the new title of the draft Regulation is similar to the title of the current Regulation No 15 of 2007 on the conditions and the procedure for integrated production of plants and plant products and their designation, and in this sense the new title is more recognisable;
• In addition to the foregoing, “plant growing and production of plant products under integrated pest management” is replaced by “integrated production of plants and plant products” throughout the draft;
• Article 1 states that the draft Regulation aims to regulate the procedure for and the manner of integrated production of plants and plant products by applying the specific principles applicable to integrated pest management. The integrated production is a voluntary system of production of plants and plant products, applying the specific principles of integrated pest management. The Plant Protection Act introduces the requirement for observing the general principles of integrated pest management, and this requirement has been mandatory since 2014. Respectively, farmers who wish to produce cropping output in an integrated manner, shall be obliged to comply with the requirements for this type of production, as set out in the draft Regulation. In addition, the draft aims to determine the procedure for and the manner of exercising control over the integrated production of plants and plant products (Article 1(2));
• Annex 1 to Article 4(1) of the notified draft Regulation is deleted on the grounds that it introduces a restriction on the number and the type of crops that can be included in the integrated production, so a possibility exists that some agricultural crops may be omitted. Guides for certain crop groups shall be elaborated at the request of farmers and/or where the need has been identified, without narrowing the framework as regards the crop groups. In the revised draft, Article 4(1) is amended to read as follows: “Integrated production of plants and plant
products shall include agricultural crops that are of great importance for the economy (cereals, legumes, vegetables [for field and greenhouse production], fruit and berry plantations, industrial crops and essential oil crops) and other crops, where the need has been identified, for which integrated pest management guides have been elaborated.”;
• Article 5(1) of the revised draft states that the elaboration of the integrated pest management guides under Article 4(1) shall be assigned by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry to the Agricultural Academy and to scientists from other scientific institutions in Bulgaria, and to representatives of branch organisations;
• Article 5(2) specifies in detail the information which must be contained in the guides under Article 5(1). The aim of this revision is to include the eight general principles of integrated pest management in the crop-specific principles of integrated pest management (or to exclude some of them that are not applicable to this crop). The requirement for the guides to include information regarding chemical agents - plant protection products of the second professional and non-professional category of use, entered in the public register under Article 6(1)(1) of
the Plant Protection Act, and the categorisation of chemical agents in lists are removed. The reason for this is that the process of authorisation/prohibition of plant protection products is dynamic and the actual list of the plant protection products authorised in the territory of Bulgaria is published on the website of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency. The list is regularly updated. This information will be included in the guides and a link to the list of the plant protection products authorised in the territory of Bulgaria will be provided. Article 5(4) includes the minimum requirements that must be contained in the guides regarding the application of the plant protection products;
• Article 9 of the draft outlines the obligations of farmers who carry out integrated production of plants and plant products, regardless of the types of crops;
• Heading III (Articles 10-16) lays down the procedure and the manner of providing consultancy services for integrated pest management, and the text “persons who have completed tertiary education in agricultural sciences with a professional field of plant protection” is replaced with “persons who have the necessary professional qualification”, and the requirement of three years professional experience is removed;
• Article 17 specifies the information that the electronic register under Article 6(1)(10) of the Plant Protection Act must contain, and Articles 18-20 include the requirements and the procedure for entry of the farmers in the register;
• Article 21 lists the cases in which the director of the respective regional directorate for food safety deletes the entry of a farmer in the register, and Article 22 indicates the information contained in the dossier of a farmer registered with the relevant regional directorate for food safety for carrying out integrated production of plants and plant products;
• Article 23(1) states that registered farmers are entitled to mark the plants and plant products which they have produced in accordance with the requirements of the draft, with a sign bearing the words “ИНТЕГРИРАНО ПРОИЗВОДСТВО” (”INTEGRATED PRODUCTION”), written in capital letters in Bulgarian. The sign is part of the label of the agricultural production;
• A separate Heading V “Control” (Articles 24 and 25) has been introduced, laying down the control procedure under Article 2, and paragraph 2 is inserted in Article 25, making a reference to Articles 145 and 171 of the Plant Protection Act regarding penalties;
• In order to clarify the used terms, “Additional Provision” sets out definitions of the terms: “environmental infrastructure”, “key bio-agents”, “investigation”, “basic substances”, “low-risk plant protection products”, “systematic observations”;
• In “Transitional and final provisions”, Article 11 of the Plant Protection Act is inserted in § 2 as legal basis for issuing the Regulation.