(1)

Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 repealed and replaced Council Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 (2). It lays down rules on marketing standards for hops and the certification of hops and empowers the Commission to adopt delegated and implementing acts in that respect. In order to ensure the smooth functioning of the application of marketing standards and the certification for hops and hop products, in the new legal framework, certain additional rules have to be adopted by means of delegated acts. This Regulation and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/601 (3) should replace Commission Regulation (EC) No 1850/2006 (4).

(2)

Article 77(1) of Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 provides that products of the hops sector harvested or prepared within the Union are subject to a certification procedure which guarantees that they meet minimum quality requirements. In order to ensure a uniform application of the certification procedure in the Member States, it is necessary to specify the products of the hop sector subject to certification.

(3)

Article 77(4) of Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 provides that products of the hop sector may be marketed or exported only if covered by a certificate issued in accordance with that provision. Breweries pay great attention to the quality of the hops used in the brewing process because that ingredient has a big influence on the taste of the final product. Where hops are grown and processed by breweries or by third parties on contract for a brewery, requiring an official certification in addition to the internal quality control of the brewery concerned would create additional cost and an unnecessary administrative burden. Small quantities of products of the hops sector sold to private individuals in small packages are a niche market and certifying the content of each small package and marking the packages according to the applicable rules would be an unjustifiable amount of work, especially as this would also have an impact on the price of those products for the private users. Isomerised hop products have undergone heavy processing and are of a stable nature, which is why certification is no longer necessary to guarantee their quality. It is therefore appropriate to exempt certain hop products from the certification requirement for marketing or export purposes.

(4)

In view of establishing the scope of the exemption from the certification obligation for hops grown and/or processed for breweries under contract or by the breweries themselves, while still ensuring a supervision by the competent certification authority, the brewer should inform the competent certification authority through a harvest declaration about the varieties grown, the quantities harvested, the places of production and the areas planted in order to ensure that the products in question are only for the use of the brewery concerned. As far as the processing of hops for breweries is concerned, the certification authority should be provided with advance information about the brewery concerned, the processor, the raw material and the final product to enable a certain supervision of the process. The packaging of those products should also carry a special mention that they may not be marketed to ensure that they can only be used by the brewery in question.

(5)

In case a certified consignment of unprepared hops is split up for sale, each of the consignments should be accompanied by a commercial document drawn up by the vendor which bears information from the certificate of the original consignment in order to ensure the full traceability of each consignment.

(6)

To ensure the high quality of mixes of raw hops and hop products, in case of blends each of the consignments of hop cones used should meet the minimum quality requirements. In the case of blends of hop cones to be used as such, to maintain the special character conferred to the product by the variety and the production area, only hop cones of the same area and variety should be used. For hop products, a blend of hops of different varieties and/or production areas can be required to obtain a certain flavour profile, which is why such blends should be permitted and each variety and/or origin should be entered in the certificate, with indication of the percentage weight of each variety and/or production area, to allow traceability. Given that over time hops lose some of the alpha acid which influences their special flavour, only raw hops of the same harvest year should be blended, both for hop blends to be used as such and for hop products. In order to ensure that no elements which do not meet the requirements can be added, blended products of the hops sector should only be certified if they were blended under official surveillance in certification centres.

(7)

The minimum quality requirements for both prepared and unprepared raw hops as far as their moisture content, content of leaves, stalks and hop waste as well as seeds in the case of seedless hops should be specified.

(8)

As this Regulation updates and replaces the existing rules laid down in Regulation (EC) No 1850/2006, that Regulation should be repealed,