Evaluation of Marketing Standards contained in the CMO Regulation, the "Breakfast Directives" and CMO secondary legislation : executive summary

Marketing standards have been a feature of agricultural and food product quality policy in the overall framework of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) since its early days. EU marketing standards have usually been defined by sectors or products; they serve the purpose of taking into account the expectations of consumers and of contributing to the improvement of the economic conditions for the production and marketing of agricultural products, as well as to the improvement of their quality. In the current framework, EU marketing standards aim at enabling the market to be easily supplied with products of a standardised and satisfactory quality, and concern technical definitions, classification, presentation, marking and labelling, packaging, production method, conservation, storage, transport, related administrative documents, certification and time limits, restrictions of use and disposal. The existing EU marketing standards are set out in three main bodies of legislation: i) the Common Market Organisation ("single CMO") established by Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013; ii) a number of Regulations ("secondary CMO legislation") setting up product-specific marketing standards; iii) a number of Directives establishing rules on description, definition, characteristics and labelling of a number of agricultural and food products usually consumed for breakfast (those Directives are hence known as the "Breakfast Directives").