The European Commission wants hemp flower to stop being a product in no man’s land. Proposal COM(2025) 553, published on 16 July 2025 as part of the Common Agricultural Policy package for the next budget framework, widens the Annex I list of agricultural products to cover every part of the plant — flower, leaves, roots — and not just seed and fibre. In May 2026 the European Parliament’s Regional Development Committee backed the text and defeated the amendments that sought to leave the flower out.
What changes on paper
Hemp has spent decades in an awkward position: the plant is a recognised agricultural crop, but its commercially most valuable part was not. That distinction produced as many interpretations as there are member states, and with them customs holds, contradictory inspections and contracts that collapsed mid-season. The proposal classifies the flower under CN code 1211 90 86 and asks that it be treated as an integral part of the plant, without undue distinctions. If the process succeeds, it would apply from 2027.
Access to CAP money
This is the heart of the matter. The Common Agricultural Policy moves around €55 billion a year, more than a third of the EU budget. Until now a European farmer could claim support for fibre and grain, but not for the part of the harvest that sustains the CBD business. Recognising the whole plant changes the financial equation of the crop and, with it, the risk profile that banks, insurers and investors apply to the sector. EU-wide standardisation is worth as much as the subsidy: it takes national political uncertainty off the table.
The fight over the THC limit
The text does not touch the 0.3% THC field ceiling. That debate runs on a separate track and is far from settled. According to Business of Cannabis, Parliament’s Agriculture Committee supports raising it to 0.5%. The European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA) goes further: its position paper for the 2028-2032 CAP calls for 1%, arguing that THC content shifts with climate, sunlight and plant stress, and that Switzerland, Czechia, Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay have operated at that level for years. Its managing director, Francesco Mirizzi, sums it up by saying a 1% limit poses no health risk. The gap between 0.3 and 1 is not cosmetic: it decides how many hectares get destroyed each summer over a stray lab result.
What stays the same
It is worth not reading more into this than there is. The proposal does not amend the novel food regulation, so ingestible CBD remains stuck in the same bottleneck. Nor does it lift the prohibition on narcotic drugs or oblige any state to allow the sale of flower for human consumption. Recognising a crop and authorising a consumer product are two different things, and that gap is precisely where several projects have crashed over the past three years.
Business implications
- Growers: it is worth reviewing 2027 acreage plans now and getting traceability and EU-catalogue variety paperwork ready.
- Extractors and processors: a recognised agricultural origin simplifies intra-EU paperwork and cuts the cost of border holds.
- Investment: less regulatory risk in the agricultural link, but the valuation ceiling is still set by novel food.
- Timeline: a plenary vote and negotiations with the Commission and Council are still pending. Industry sources reckon a year or more until the final text.
This is exactly the kind of file that gets settled in conversations between growers, processors, laboratories and distribution long before it reaches the Official Journal. At Spannabis B2B Bilbao 2027, on 11 March at the BEC VIP Room, that is what the format is built for: closed-door meetings with the people who sign. Check the tickets or book your B2B table if you want to have those conversations before your competitors do.
Sources: HempToday and Business of Cannabis.