Bee health: nominations open for stakeholder group

EFSA is inviting nominations for its new stakeholder discussion group on bees. The group has been set up to establish the terms of reference for the EU Bee Partnership, which is expected to be up and running in 2018.

The proposed partnership was one of the outcomes of the scientific symposium co-organised by EFSA earlier this year. The symposium, “Collecting and sharing data on bee health: towards a European Bee Partnership”, was held in Brussels as part of European Bee and Pollination Week 2017, which is hosted by the European Parliament.

Participants agreed to work towards setting up the European Bee Partnership, a platform run by stakeholders for the benefit of stakeholders to ensure that honey bees, and eventually other pollinators, can thrive and prosper in Europe.

EFSA pledged to facilitate the next steps by organising through its Stakeholder Engagement Approach a discussion group to agree the terms of reference for the partnership.

EFSA’s stakeholder discussion groups are targeted engagement platforms that act as “learning systems”, allowing EFSA to capitalise on stakeholders’ specialist knowledge in specific areas, for example developing efficient and harmonised data collection systems, methodological approaches, and identification of new or emerging issues.

Stakeholders should submit their nominations by 2 October 2017. For full details please consult the official call document.

The first meeting of the discussion group is planned for late November, a second in February and, possibly, a final meeting in May. Stakeholders will then present the EU Bee Partnership at the European Parliament’s 2018 Bee Week conference in Brussels.