Before being tested, the whole mass of the sample shall be thermally cycled two times in accordance with point 4.1.The method is applicable to both prilled and granular fertilisers which do not contain oil soluble materials.Total immersion of the test sample in gas oil for a specified period, followed by the draining away of surplus oil under specified conditions. The Commission shall without delay enter into consultation with the Member States and the relevant economic operator or operators and shall evaluate the national measures taken. The documentation shall make it possible to assess the EU fertilising product’s conformity with the relevant requirements, and shall include an adequate analysis and assessment of the risk(s).The technical documentation shall specify the applicable requirements and cover, as far as relevant for the assessment, the design, manufacture and intended use of the EU fertilising product. Importers shall, for 5 years after the EU fertilising product has been placed on the market, keep a copy of the EU declaration of conformity at the disposal of the market surveillance authorities and ensure that the technical documentation can be made available to those authorities, upon request.On request, importers shall make a copy of the EU declaration of conformity available to other economic operators.9. It may be a dossier made up of relevant individual EU declarations of conformity.4. That period shall be extended by two months at the initiative of the European Parliament or of the Council.Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 is amended as follows:in Article 2(1), point (b) is replaced by the following:influencing the life processes of plants, such as substances influencing their growth, other than as a nutrient or a plant biostimulant;’;“plant biostimulant” means a product stimulating plant nutrition processes independently of the product’s nutrient content with the sole aim of improving one or more of the following characteristics of the plant or the plant rhizosphere:availability of confined nutrients in soil or rhizosphere.’;‘8.
Provision should also be made for such importers to make sure that conformity assessment procedures have been carried out and that marking of EU fertilising products and documentation drawn up by manufacturers are available for inspection by the competent national authorities.When placing an EU fertilising product on the market, importers should indicate on the packaging of the EU fertilising product their name, registered trade name or registered trade mark and the postal address at which they can be contacted, in order to enable market surveillance.Since distributors make an EU fertilising product available on the market after it has been placed on the market by the manufacturer or the importer, they should act with due care to ensure that their handling of the EU fertilising product does not adversely affect the compliance of that EU fertilising product with this Regulation.Economic operators who either place an EU fertilising product on the market under their own name or trade mark or modify an EU fertilising product in such a way that compliance with this Regulation may be affected should be considered to be manufacturers and should assume the obligations of manufacturers. Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by CDC or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website. Since accreditation is an essential means of verifying the competence of conformity assessment bodies, it should also be used for the purposes of notification.Due to the variable nature of certain component materials of EU fertilising products, and the potentially irreversible nature of some of the damage to which soil and crop exposure to impurities could lead, transparent accreditation as provided for in Regulation (EC) No 765/2008, ensuring the necessary level of confidence in certificates of conformity of EU fertilising products, should be the only means of demonstrating the technical competence of conformity assessment bodies.Conformity assessment bodies frequently subcontract parts of their activities linked to the assessment of conformity or have recourse to a subsidiary.