Regulation (EU) 2026/1739, published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 29 July 2026, amends Regulations (EU) No 1308/2013 (single CMO), 2021/2115 (CAP strategic plans) and 2021/2116 (CAP financing) ‘as regards the strengthening of the position of farmers in the food supply chain’. The European legislator intervenes on four fronts:
- the reservation of the optional terms ‘fair’, ‘equitable’ and ‘short supply chain’;
- the extension of mandatory written contracts to all agricultural sectors;
- the reinforcement of producer organisations;
- the protection of meat designations (so-called meat sounding).
The new rules must be read in conjunction with Directive (EU) 2019/633 on unfair trading practices and Directive (EU) 2024/825, which governs environmental — and social sustainability — claims.
Context and objectives
The first recital of Regulation (EU) 2026/1739 records the causes of the agricultural crisis: the pandemic, growing instability in world trade, increasingly extreme weather events and the war in Ukraine have led to ‘an unprecedented increase of energy-related agricultural input costs and a prolonged period of high inflation’.
Those factors ‘have further destabilised the way that added value is distributed along the food supply chain’, ‘fuelling protests and mistrust’. The declared objective is ‘to restore fairness and the trust of actors in the food supply chain, to strengthen the position of farmers and to improve their bargaining power’ – including through producer organisations and cooperatives as creators of added value – ‘as well as to protect farmers’ incomes and to increase young people’s confidence in the farming profession’.
‘Fair’ and ‘equitable’ claims
Article 1(3) of the regulation inserts into Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 a new Subsection 3a and Article 88a, ‘Optional terms for commercial modalities’. The term ‘fair’ or ‘equitable’, or ‘terms having an equivalent meaning to those terms’, may be used ‘on the labelling of, in the presentation of, on advertising material for or on the commercial documents related to a product’ only where the modalities for the organisation of production, distribution or placing on the market aim to ensure at least three cumulative conditions:
a) ‘stability, including through the contracts between the producers and buyers, transparency in the relationships between farmers and purchasers along the supply chain, and transparency in the information about participating farmers’;
b) ‘a price for their products that is considered by participating farmers to be equitable and remunerative’, whereby ‘the price may take into account relevant available data on production costs’;
c) ‘collective initiatives pursuing one or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, notably contributing to the development of rural communities, in particular through the promotion of democratically managed collective organisations of farmers’.
Recital 4 adds that such commercial modalities must also operate ‘in a manner that is consistent with Annex I to Directive (EU) 2024/1760’, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). The reference welds the fairness of agricultural prices to due diligence on human rights and the environment along value chains.
‘Short supply chain’, definition and conditions of use
Article 88a(2) reserves the term ‘short supply chain’ to cases where ‘consumers are able to easily identify the holdings of the participating farmers where the raw material was produced’ and where, alternatively:
a) there is ‘a direct connection between the farmer and the final consumer of the product, with one intermediary if appropriate’; or
b) there is ‘a close connection between the farmer and the final consumer of the product, with a limited number of intermediaries, and where the farmer, the intermediaries and the final consumer of the product are in geographical proximity to one another’.
‘Geographical proximity’ – recital 5 clarifies – is to be understood inter alia as ‘a short distance or short travelling time which takes into account the geographical and demographical specificities of the Member States’, ‘including in cross-border contexts’. The Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts adding equivalent terms and specifying the conditions of use, ‘taking into account any relevant international standard and related quality certified schemes’. Member States may maintain additional conditions, but such rules ‘shall not prohibit, restrict or impede the use of the terms’ for products ‘legally produced or marketed in another Member State’. Article 88a(5) leaves the rules of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on food information to consumers unaffected.
Written contracts, from milk to all agricultural sectors
Article 148 of the CMO Regulation, as recast, confirms the obligation of a written contract for deliveries of milk and dairy products, and is now flanked by the new Article 168, which extends the obligation to all ‘deliveries in the Union of agricultural products from a sector listed in Article 1(2) other than milk and milk products and sugar by farmers, including farmers’ associations, or by producer organisations or associations of producer organisations, to processors, distributors or retailers’.
The contract shall ‘be made in advance of the delivery’ and ‘in writing, including in electronic form’, and must include, in particular:
- the price payable for the delivery, which shall ‘be static and set out in the contract’ or ‘be calculated by combining various factors set out in the contract, which shall include objective indicators, indices or methods of calculation of the final price, that are easily accessible and comprehensible and that reflect changes in market conditions and changes in relevant elements of production costs which impact the remuneration of farmers’. Member States may determine indicators, which may be published online, based inter alia on data from interbranch organisations and from the EU Agri-food chain Observatory (AFCO);
- the quantity, quality and timing of deliveries;
- the duration, with a termination clause and – for contracts with a minimum duration longer than six months in the dairy sector, or twelve months in the other sectors – ‘a revision clause that can be triggered by the farmer, including a farmers’ association, or by a producer organisation or an association of producer organisations’;
- payment periods and procedures, arrangements for collection or delivery, and the ‘rules applicable in the event of force majeure’.
Derogations are provided for:
- deliveries by members to their own producer organisation or cooperative, subject to the statutory conditions discussed below;
- deliveries made for free or in the context of the disposal of products no longer fit for sale.
Member States may further exempt cases where:
- the first buyer is a micro or small-sized enterprise;
- deliveries total value does not exceed EUR 10,000;
- simultaneous delivery and payment (or, for products other than milk, ‘at the latest within 3 working days’);
- products ‘subject to seasonal supply or demand fluctuations or perishability’ and products ‘subject to traditional or customary selling practices’. Even in those cases, however, the farmer ‘may require’ a written contract or a written offer for a contract. Member States must ensure the availability of ‘mediation or comparable mechanisms’, impartial and voluntary for the parties, and may require the registration of contracts. Annex X aligns sugar beet delivery contracts with the same conditions.
Producer organisations, strengthened collective bargaining
The regulation acts on several levers:
- multi-sector recognition: under Article 152, recognition ‘may be granted for one or more of the specific sectors listed in Article 1(2)’ upon a single application, ‘provided that the producer organisation fulfils the conditions for recognition for all of them’;
- non-recognised POs: the derogation from Article 101(1) TFEU is extended to organisations – ‘including a cooperative or any other equivalent legal form recognised by national law’ – which have applied for recognition; they ‘may plan production, optimise the production costs, place on the market and negotiate contracts for the supply of agricultural products, on behalf of its members for all or part of their total production’, within defined time-limits (up to five years from the application, in the absence of a Member State decision);
- associations of POs: they may negotiate contractual terms on behalf of their members provided, inter alia, that the volume of the product concerned ‘does not exceed 36 % of the total national production of that product in the Member State concerned’;
- raw milk: the ceilings for collective negotiations under Article 149 rise to ‘7 % of total Union production’ and ‘36 % of the total national production’ of the Member State of production and of delivery;
- direct contact with buyers: the statutes of a PO may allow it, but ‘concentration of supply and the placing of products on the market shall be deemed to have been ensured if the essential elements of the sales, such as price, quality and volume, are negotiated and determined by the producer organisation’.
Recognised interbranch organisations may also pursue the objective of ‘promoting the use of the optional terms referred to in Article 88a’ (Article 157).
‘Meat sounding’, designations reserved for meat
Article 1(13) inserts into Annex VII to the CMO Regulation a new Part Ia, ‘Meat and meat products designations’:
- ‘meat’ means ‘the edible parts of an animal falling within the scope of application of this Regulation’;
- ‘meat products’ means ‘products derived from meat, on the understanding that substances necessary for their manufacture can be added provided that those substances are not used for the purpose of replacing, in whole or in part, any meat constituent’.
The term ‘meat’ and a list of 31 designations – ‘beef’, ‘veal’, ‘pork’, ‘poultry’, ‘chicken’, ‘turkey’, ‘duck’, ‘goose’, ‘lamb’, ‘mutton’, ‘ovine’, ‘goat’, ‘drumstick’, ‘tenderloin’, ‘sirloin’, ‘flank’, ‘loin’, ‘ribs’, ‘shoulder’, ‘shank’, ‘chop’, ‘wing’, ‘breast’, ‘thigh’, ‘brisket’, ‘ribeye’, ‘T-bone’, ‘rump’, ‘bacon’, ‘steak’ and ‘liver’ (see table) – are reserved ‘at all stages of marketing’ to meat products and to products whose name combines those terms with a word or words designating the animal species of origin.
Point 4 specifies that those terms ‘shall not be used to designate food consisting of, isolated from or produced from cell culture or tissue culture derived from animals, plants, micro-organisms, fungi or algae’ within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 on novel foods. The prohibition thus covers both plant-based substitutes and innovative proteins, including s.c. cell-cultured meat.
Fishery and aquaculture products remain unaffected, as do – through future delegated acts – products ‘the exact nature of which is clear due to an established long-term use and does not cause any possible confusion to the consumer’.
Table — The 31 reserved designations, grouped by species
| Group | Reserved designation | Type |
| Bovine | beef | species (adult) |
| veal | species (young) | |
| brisket | cut | |
| ribeye | cut | |
| T-bone | portion | |
| rump | cut | |
| Porcine | pork | species |
| bacon | processed product | |
| Ovine and caprine | lamb | species (young) |
| mutton | species (adult) | |
| ovine | species category | |
| goat | species | |
| Poultry | poultry | species category |
| chicken | species | |
| turkey | species | |
| duck | species | |
| goose | species | |
| drumstick | cut | |
| wing | cut | |
| thigh | cut | |
| Multi-species | tenderloin | cut |
| sirloin | cut | |
| flank | cut | |
| loin | cut | |
| ribs | cut | |
| shoulder | cut | |
| shank | cut | |
| chop | portion | |
| breast | cut | |
| steak | portion | |
| liver | offal |
Note on the columns. The ‘Group’ and ‘Type’ columns do not appear in the legislative text, which lists the 31 designations without classifying them: they constitute an editorial systematisation for ease of reading.
Sustainability, antitrust derogations and crisis management
Article 210a of the CMO Regulation – which shields sustainability agreements applying standards higher than mandatory ones from Article 101 TFEU – is enriched with three new objectives:
- ‘supporting the economic viability of small farms predominantly relying on family labour’ (standard output not exceeding EUR 100,000);
- ‘attracting and supporting young producers of agricultural products’;
- ‘improving working and safety conditions in agricultural or processing activities’.
The social dimension of sustainability thus expressly enters the perimeter of the antitrust derogations, with the possibility of requesting Commission opinions from 19 August 2028.
‘During periods of severe imbalance in markets’, Article 222 allows collective actions (‘market withdrawal or free distribution of their products’, ‘storage by private operators’, ‘temporary planning of production’, etc.) supported by the agricultural reserve referred to in Article 16 of Regulation (EU) 2021/2116.
CAP, incentives for producer organisations
The amendments to Regulation (EU) 2021/2115 provide for:
- an increase of Union financial assistance to operational programmes from 50% to 70% of expenditure in the event of ‘adverse climatic events, natural disasters, plant diseases or pest infestations’, where ‘losses exceed a threshold of at least 30 % of the average annual production’ of the PO in the preceding three-year period (or a three-year average based on the preceding five years, ‘excluding the highest and the lowest entry’);
- a 10% increase for POs in Member States where the degree of organisation in the fruit and vegetables sector has been below 10% for three consecutive years;
- a 20-percentage-point increase for investments made ‘at the premises of such young farmers or new farmers’ who ‘join for the first time a producer organisation recognised under Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013’;
- the option for Member States to use ‘up to 6 %’ of their direct payment allocations for sectoral interventions.
Entry into force and deferred application
The regulation enters into force on the twentieth day following its publication (18 August 2026). The rules on optional terms (Article 88a), written contracts (Articles 148 and 168), PO statutes and sugar beet apply from 19 August 2028; the reserved meat designations from 19 August 2029. Non-compliant products produced in or imported into the Union before that date ‘may continue to be placed on the market until stocks of those products are exhausted’, or until 19 August 2032, whichever is the earlier (Article 4).
Unfair trading practices, and the new basic requirements for cooperatives
The new written-contract regime operates alongside Directive (EU) 2019/633 on unfair trading practices (UTPs) in business-to-business relationships in the agricultural and food supply chain, previously analysed in these columns (Dongo, 2019). Recital 22 expressly preserves the Member States’ power to adopt national measures against unfair practices, ‘provided that such measures are appropriate and proportionate for securing attainment of the objective pursued and are compatible with Directive (EU) 2019/633 …, including its Article 9’.
Regulation (EU) 2026/1739 nonetheless departs from the UTPs Directive on a systematically significant point:
- the directive protects suppliers against buyers according to progressive turnover thresholds, and does not govern the internal relations between members and their cooperatives and producer organisations, which remained in practice outside its scope of application (with well-known controversies at national transposition level);
- the new regulation introduces, for the first time, certain basic requirements addressed to cooperatives and POs: the exemption from the written contract for members’ deliveries applies only ‘provided that the statutes of that producer organisation or cooperative or the rules and decisions provided for in, or derived from, those statutes provide for transparent and democratically decided rules, made known in advance, for methods for determining the price of the products delivered by those members, taking into account the impact on the remuneration of farmers, and the payment periods and procedures’ (Articles 148(5) and 168(5)). The statutes must also enable farmer members ‘to scrutinise democratically their organisation and its decisions as well as its accounts and budgets’ (Article 153). Transparency on price-setting methods and payment terms thus reaches inside the mutualistic relationship between member and cooperative, complementing the external protections of the UTPs Directive.
The link with Directive (EU) 2024/825, environmental and social sustainability
The claims ‘fair’, ‘equitable’ and ‘short supply chain’ are sustainability claims with a predominantly social and economic content. They therefore also fall within the scope of Directive (EU) 2024/825 (Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition, ECGT), which amended Directive 2005/29/EC on unfair B2C commercial practices by extending its protections to statements concerning the environmental or social characteristics of products and traders. Additional and cumulative obligations thus apply on top of Article 88a:
- ‘sustainability labels’ – defined by the directive as voluntary marks distinguishing products, processes or businesses by reference to environmental or social characteristics – may be displayed only if based on a certification scheme or established by public authorities;
- generic, unsubstantiated claims are prohibited, as are claims concerning the entire product when they relate only to one of its aspects, and boasts about requirements already imposed by law presented as distinctive features of the offer;
- every voluntary statement must be verifiable and evidence-based, in line with the general principles of fair information practices (Article 7, Regulation EU No 1169/2011).
The social sustainability of supply chains – fair remuneration of farmers, working conditions, development of rural communities – thereby becomes subject to a twin-track compliance regime: the substantive conditions of Article 88a of the CMO Regulation and the communication rules of the ECGT Directive, in addition to the due diligence duty under Directive (EU) 2024/1760 for larger undertakings.
Implications for operators, the role of FARE
The two years remaining before the new rules apply are the time available to adjust contracts and commercial communication. Operators – farmers, cooperatives, POs, processors, distributors and retail chains – will need to review supply contracts (price, indicators, revision and termination clauses, force majeure, registration), the statutes of cooperatives and producer organisations, and every fairness and proximity claim on labels, advertising and commercial documents. The FARE team (Food and Agriculture Requirements) provides strategic, legal and technical advice on drafting supply chain contracts compliant with the new Articles 148 and 168 of the CMO Regulation and on verifying the conformity of commercial information – on products and organisations – with Regulation (EU) 2026/1739, Directives (EU) 2019/633 and 2024/825 and Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, including environmental and social sustainability claims across supply chains.
Dario Dongo
Credit cover Loren King on Unsplash
References
EU Regulations
Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on the provision of food information to consumers. OJ L 304, 22.11.2011. Consolidated text: 01/04/2025 http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2011/1169/2025-04-01
Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2013 establishing a common organisation of the markets in agricultural products. OJ L 347, 20.12.2013. Consolidated text: 18/03/2026 http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2013/1308/2026-03-18
Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 on novel foods. OJ L 327, 11.12.2015. Consolidated text: 27/03/2021 http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2015/2283/2021-03-27
Regulation (EU) 2021/2115 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 2 December 2021 establishing rules on support for CAP strategic plans. OJ L 435, 6.12.2021. Consolidated text: 18/03/2026 http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/2115/2026-03-18
Regulation (EU) 2021/2116 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 2 December 2021 on the financing, management and monitoring of the CAP. OJ L 435, 6.12.2021. Consolidated text: 18/03/2026. Consolidated text: 18/03/2026 http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/2115/2026-03-18
Regulation (EU) 2026/1739 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 July 2026 amending Regulations (EU) No 1308/2013, (EU) 2021/2115 and (EU) 2021/2116 as regards the strengthening of the position of farmers in the food supply chain. OJ L, 2026/1739, 29.7.2026. http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2026/1739/oj
EU Directives
Directive (EU) 2019/633 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the agricultural and food supply chain. OJ L 111, 25.4.2019. http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/633/oj
Directive (EU) 2024/825 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 February 2024 amending Directives 2005/29/EC and 2011/83/EU as regards empowering consumers for the green transition. OJ L, 2024/825, 6.3.2024. http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/825/oj
Directive (EU) 2024/1760 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 on corporate sustainability due diligence. OJ L, 2024/1760, 5.7.2024. http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/1760/oj
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
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