In February 2019, the European Commission tabled a draft delegated act on production rules for organic salt. The European producers of traditional sea salt – and several Member States – expressed serious reservations as the proposed text would have allowed practically all types of salt production to be considered as organic.

The European Commission withdrew its proposal and asked organic experts of the EGTOP group to look into the issue. As this group did not have expertise with regard to the salt sector, a sub-group of 4 salt experts was set up by an international tender. One of these experts produced a Report on his own calling for all the salts to be eligible to organic labelling while the other three experts agreed in a Joint report that only the salts that met the principles and objectives of the EU organic regulation should be considered.

The European Commission drafted a synthesis of this work and asked the EGTOP group to endorse a document that backs the proposal it made in 2019, overruling the sub-group joint report recommendations. 

The content of this document is extremely worrying as the European Commission is preparing to make virtually all existing salt production methods eligible for the organic label, including the least environmentally friendly ones, such as mine salt and vacuum salt.

This proposal would clearly go against the objectives and principles of EU Regulation 848/2018 on organic production. It  would undermine the credibility of the EU organic farming policy and go against the objectives set out by the EC in its ambitious European Green Deal for a more sustainable use of resources.