Commissioner Várhelyi, in a written answer on 3 July 2026, defended the EU's system for controlling food imports as a 'live and flexible mechanism' that is continuously adapted to emerging risks, while pointing to a new AI tool and recent legislative upgrades in the honey sector as evidence of ongoing improvements. The answer addresses concerns raised by 19 MEPs about systemic shortcomings in food safety controls, including repeated alerts for unsafe food, suspected fraud, and excessive pesticide levels in imported products.
The Commissioner's response, to a parliamentary question led by Emil Radev (PPE), outlines three pillars of the existing system: intensified official controls under Regulation 2019/1873, increased physical checks for animal products under Regulation 2019/2129, and reinforced border controls for certain non-animal origin products under Regulation 2019/1793. Várhelyi described the new TraceMap tool as an AI-assisted system that analyses existing data from the Alert and Cooperation Network and TRACES to identify suspicious patterns more efficiently, enabling proactive screening and faster recalls. He stressed that TraceMap is 'not a predictive tool' but strengthens preventive risk management through automated traceability mapping.
On the question of uniform standards, Várhelyi cited the revised Honey Directive as a recent example of the system's adaptability, noting that after coordinated EU actions identified suspected adulteration with sugar syrups, the EU improved origin labelling, introduced new listing requirements for third-country establishments, and will strengthen traceability systems. The answer does not announce new legislative proposals or numerical targets, instead emphasising that the existing framework evolves continuously through risk-management measures and cooperation between the Commission and Member States.
The answer signals that the Commission sees the current legal framework as sufficient, with incremental improvements through technology (TraceMap) and sector-specific updates (honey) rather than a systemic overhaul. The response is likely to reassure EU producers and importers that no major new compliance burdens are imminent, but may disappoint consumer protection advocates and some MEPs who had called for more ambitious action to address what they described as hundreds of monthly alerts and recurring fraud cases. Institutional follow-up is expected through routine updates to implementing regulations and continued monitoring via IMSOC data.