. /.   WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  G/TBT/N/EEC/341 
30 July 2010 
 (10-4080) 
Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade Original:   English 
  
 
NOTIFICATION 
 
The following notification is being circ ulated in accordance with Article 10.6. 
 
1. Member to Agreement notifying:  EUROPEAN UNION
 
If applicable, name of local government involved (Article 3.2 and 7.2):  
2. Agency responsible:  European Commission 
Name and address (including telephone and fax numbers, email and website 
addresses, if available) of agency or authority designated to handle comments 
regarding the notification shall be  indicated if different from above : 
European Commission 
EU-TBT Enquiry Point Fax:  +(32) 2 299 80 43 E-mail:  eu-tbt@ec.europa.eu Website:  http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/tbt/
 
3. Notified under Article 2.9.2 [ X ], 2.10.1 [   ], 5.6.2 [   ], 5.7.1 [   ], other: 
4. Products covered (HS or CCCN where applicab le, otherwise national tariff heading. 
ICS numbers may be provided in  addition, where applicable):  Fertilisers (HS: 31) 
5. Title, number of pages and language(s) of the notified document:  Draft Commission 
Regulation amending Regulation (EC) No 2003/2003  of the European Parliament and of the 
Council relating to fertilisers for the purposes of adapting Annexes I and IV thereto to 
technical progress (16 pages, in English). 
6. Description of content:  The main elements of the legislative proposal are:  
• to allow the placing on the market of three ne w fertiliser types namely calcium formate, 
fluid zinc fertiliser and IDHA (a chelating agen t)  in order to make them more easily 
available for farmers across the EU; 
• to harmonise the rules for micro-nutrient solutions and micro-nutrient chelates i.e. to 
allow the use of more than one chelati ng agent, to adopt common values for the 
minimum content of water-soluble micro-nutri ent and to introduce labelling obligations 
for chelating agents chelating at least 1% of the water-soluble micro-nutrient; 
• to introduce fertiliser type designations a llowing micro-nutrients blends to be in 
compliance with the requirements of Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 2003/2003; 
• to introduce references to EN standards to simplify legislation. G/TBT/N/EEC/341 
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7. Objective and rationale, including the nature of urgent problems where applicable: 
• Manufacturers will benefit from direct access to the internal market and farmers will 
take advantage of a wider range of fertiliser types;  
• Access to EN Standards will be easier a nd a significant reduction of the number of 
pages of the Community legislation on fertilisers is foreseen; 
• The efficient control of EC fertilisers will be reinforced. 
8. Relevant documents:   Regulation (EC) No 2003/2003 of the European Parliament and of 
the Council relating to fertilisers, OJEU L304, 21.11.2003, pp. 1-194. 
http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriSer v.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:304:0001:0194:EN:PDF  
Analytical methods for the determination of nu trients are listed in Annex IV to Regulation 
(EC) No 2003/2003 and CEN has published a list of EN Standards available at: 
http://esearch.cen.eu/ExtendedSearch.aspx  
Information about permitted deviations is av ailable in Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 
2003/2003. 
9. Proposed date of adoption: 
Proposed date of entry into force:   End of February 2011 
20 days from publication in the Official Journal of the EU (about a month after 
adoption approx.) 
10. Final date for comments:  60 days from date of notification. 
11. Text available from: National enquiry po int [  ], or address, telephone and fax 
numbers, e-mail and web-site addresses, if available of the other body:  
European Commission 
EU-TBT Enquiry Point Fax:  + (32) 2 299 80 43 E-mail:  eu-tbt@ec.europa.eu The text is available on the EU-TBT Website:  http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/tbt/
 
And can also be downloaded here: 
http://members.wto.org/crnattachments/2010/tbt/eec/10_2919_00_e.pdf