Regulating Organic Farming in the European Union - Balancing Consumer Preferences and Free Movement Imperatives

The European Union, being one of the first jurisdictions in the world to have implemented a policy on organic farming, is emerging as a regulatory policy leader in this area. After realizing that consumers were willing to pay higher prices for products obtained using organic methods, the European Union made an attempt to define both production and marketing rules for these products in order to ensure conditions of fair competition among organic producers.This paper discusses the evolving European legal framework for organic food and examines the extent to which this framework meets its actual declared goal of responding to consumer demand for organic products, by contributing inter alia to the protection of the environment, biodiversity, animal welfare and rural development