Certificates of Conformity are now electronic: with circular letter No. 0649471 of 19 December 2022, the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests (MASAF) has established new measures regarding the entry of the Certificate in the SIB Information System.
From 1 January 2023, the Certificate of Conformity pursuant to Reg. (EU) 2018/848 must in fact be issued by Control Bodies only in electronic format via the European information system TRACES, already used for the issuance of Certificate of Inspection (COI) in the case of import of organic products from third countries.
In line with the Commission’s digital strategy, TRACES enables both EU and non-EU authorities to stamp digitally official documents and certificates (with electronic seal and electronic signature), thus, making the use of paper certification obsolete.
This means that, from this date on, all Authorities of Member States no longer have the right to have the Certificates issued also into the national IT systems, but it is still mandatory, however, for the same Member States, to keep an updated list of the names and addresses of operators and groups of operators who have notified their activities, on a single national platform (in our case, the SIB).
Specifically, therefore, Control Bodies, after having issued the Certificate of Conformity on the TRACES system, must attach, on the same date, the same file in PDF format in the related sections of the national platform.
To check your certificate status, you can access the public area of TRACES using the following link: http://bit.ly/3RiuNaD
