New rules for plant protection products operators?

Legal and administrative changes

During the month of October, the Portuguese Government introduced legal and administrative changes in the regimes on plant protection products, namely on the requirements applicable to the points of sale of plant protection products for non-professional use and on the cards for the identification of operators of plant protection products.

• On the one side, on October 11, it was published Decree-Law No. 70/2024, which aimed at updating and consequently clarifying the requirements applicable to the system of registration of sales that should be maintained by points of sale of plant protection products for non-professional use.

The aforementioned Decree-Law amends the legal regime applicable to the authorization and sale of plant protection products for non-professional use, as approved by Decree-Law No. 101/2009, of May 11.

In essence, through the changes introduced sales operators continue to have the obligation to maintain an updated register which contains information on the products they sell, with information on transactions, quantities, batch number, origin, amongst others, but no longer have to ensure that such register is updated until the last business day of each month.

The above means that the obligation of maintaining a registration of sales has been soften, mostly due to the fact that it was proven to be too onerous for the economic operators who sell plant protection product for non-professional use, but it was not eliminated. Moreover, it is worth highlighting that such change does not impact the points of sale of plant protection products for professional use, as for these the obligations remain unchanged.

• As mentioned previsouly, besides this change concerning the system for registration of sales, the Portuguese General Directorate of Food and Veterinary (DGAV), as the entity responsible for supervisory the market of plant protection products, also published the Order No. 12848/2024. This Order aims to update the design of the three models of identification cards intended to prove qualifications of the responsible technician, sales operator, specialized applicator, and applicator of plant protection products.

These changes in the cards do not, however, affect the validity of the cards issued by the competent authority until the present moment, which shall remain valid up until the date of expiry.

Considering all of the above, it should be noted that both changes, even though impacting the legal regime applicable to plant protection product, do not seem to represent a significat impact to plant protection product operators.