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When the
Common Agricultural Policy was implemented and the respective
series of Common Market Organisations were introduced from the
beginning of the early 1960s, also seeds of agricultural and
horticultural species became regulated by a number of seed
marketing Directives. At the same time, the seed industry, which
historically always had been a highly regulated and controlled
business also at the level of regions and nation states as well
as by intra-industry agreements, felt the need to organise
structures that would match the new powers and provisions of the
European Community.
So in 1961
COSEMCO (Seed Trade), in 1964 ASSOPOMAC (Potato
Breeders), in 1970 AMUFOC (Forage Seed Production) and in
1977 COMASSO (Plant Breeders) were founded, each
representing important parts of the plant breeding, seed
production and marketing chain.
In 1998,
the organisational structure of the European Seed
Associations was created as a common roof of the still
existing four European Associations as well as representing
already a number of individual vegetable seed companies. It was
soon felt that in view of the changing political and
administrative environment and the multitude of common tasks and
interests, an even closer integration would be needed in order
to keep up with the increasing pace of legislative developments
at the EU as well as the international level.
The new
ESA European Seed Association was founded in November 2000
and merges the former members, i.e. associations as well as
individual companies into one single EU wide organisation
representing the totality of the European seed industry active
in research, breeding, production and marketing of seeds. |
