EU Court Allows Mandate for Felling Trees Near Those Infected by Xylella

The EU Court of Justice said that the European Commission may require mem­ber states to remove all plants capa­ble of being infected by Xylella fas­tidiosa (Xf) bac­terium if they are in the vicin­ity of plants already affected, even when there are no symp­toms of infec­tion.

According to the judge­ment, ​“the con­cerned Member State, within a 100 m radius around the plants that have been tested and found to be infected by the spec­i­fied organ­ism, imme­di­ately removes: host plants, regard­less of their health sta­tus; plants infected by the spec­i­fied organ­ism; plants show­ing symp­toms sug­ges­tive of pos­si­ble infec­tion by that organ­ism or sus­pected of being infected by that organ­ism.” Moreover, it ​“must per­form appro­pri­ate pes­ti­cide treat­ments against the spec­i­fied vec­tor organ­ism and plants that can host vec­tors. Such treat­ments may include, where appro­pri­ate, the removal of plants.”

In an expe­dited pro­ce­dure, the Court con­firmed the valid­ity of the Commission’s deci­sion that imposed the oblig­a­tion to remove all host plants within a radius of 100 meters around infected plants. Since the oblig­a­tion to apply appro­pri­ate phy­tosan­i­tary treat­ments might include, ​‘as appro­pri­ate’, removal of plants, a sys­tem of com­pen­sa­tion for farm­ers is not laid down by the mea­sure at the moment, but can­not how­ever be excluded.

Luxembourg judges clar­i­fied that, although the sci­en­tific opin­ions have not yet shown the exis­tence of a cer­tain causal con­nec­tion between the Xylella and des­ic­ca­tion of the olive trees, ​“nonethe­less there is a sig­nif­i­cant cor­re­la­tion between that bac­terium and the pathol­ogy dis­played by the olive trees. In this sense, the adop­tion of pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures such as the removal of infected plants, even where there is sci­en­tific uncer­tainty on the sub­ject, is jus­ti­fied by the pre­cau­tion­ary prin­ci­ple.”

The Court also affirmed that the removal of the plants located in the vicin­ity of infected plants is strictly ​‘pro­por­tion­ate,’ con­sid­er­ing the adop­tion by the Commission, in 2014 of lighter mea­sures that have failed to pre­vent the spread the bac­terium. Furthermore, ​“the adop­tion of less bur­den­some mea­sures are not pos­si­ble, since there is cur­rently no treat­ment that will heal the infected plants in the open field.”

Luxembourg, how­ever, warned that in the event of new sci­en­tific data from which it tran­spires that it is no longer nec­es­sary to chop down the host plants, the Commission should amend the mea­sures.

In December, a pros­e­cu­tor in Lecce ordered a seizure of all olive trees slated for removal in the emer­gency plan, which he now has to decide whether to keep or revoke.

“I will con­vene a task force meet­ing next Tuesday for assess­ing the effects of this judg­ment,” said the pres­i­dent of the Apulia Region, Michele Emiliano, who after Tuesday’s meet­ing intends to con­front the Lecce pros­e­cu­tor and the Ministry of Agriculture. ​“Based on the Italian posi­tion which will emerge from such con­vo­ca­tions I will require a meet­ing with the high­est author­i­ties of the European Union,” Emiliano announced.

As expected, the judge­ment has prompted protests among farm­ers who strug­gle for the safe­guard of their plants.

• ANSA


• Il Fatto Quotidiano