Wine Law

234 WINE LAW be issued, as far as possible, in electronic format and will at least allow the identification of the operator or group of operators, particularly the list of members, the category of products covered by the certificate and its period of validity. Likewise, it will certify that the notified activity is according to the standard and will be issued following the model established in Annex VI. No operator or group of operators 41 shall have the right to obtain from more than one control body a certificate for the activities carried out in the same Member State, concerning the same category of products, even when the operator or group of operators participates in various stages of production, preparation and distribution. Nor will they be entitled to obtain an individual certificate with respect to any of the activities covered by the certification of the group to which the operators belong. The Regulation allows the Member States to exempt from the obligation to be in possession of a certificate the operators who sell non-packaged organic products other than feed, provided that these operators do not produce, prepare, store – except in relationship with the point of sale – or import said products from third countries, nor subcontract a third party to carry out such activities. Lastly, for the exemption, the sales must not exceed 5,000 kg per year nor represent an annual turnover of unpacked organic products exceeding 20,000 €, and the potential cost of certification of the operator cannot exceed 2% of the total turnover of unpackaged organic products sold by the operator 42 . 4.7. Official controls and other activities Article 37 of Regulation (EU) 2018/848 provides that “The specific rules of this Chapter shall apply, in addition to the rules laid down in Regulation (EU) 2017/625, save as otherwise provided for in Article 40(2) of this Regulation, and in addition to Article 29 of this Regulation, save as otherwise provided for in Article 41(1) of this Regulation, to the official controls and other official activities performed to verify throughout the entire process at all stages of production, preparation and distribution that the products referred to in Article 2(1) of this Regulation have been produced in compliance with this Regulation.”. In turn, article 38 lays down additional rules on the official controls and measures to be taken by the competent authorities. In this way, official controls performed 41 Each group of operators will be made up solely of farmers or operators who produce algae or aquaculture animals and who, in addition, may be engaged in the transformation, preparation or marketing of food or feed. 42 The Member State that decides to exempt operators may set stricter limits than those established in this rule. These decisions have to be communicated to the Commission and to the rest of the Member States.