In December 2023, the European Commission released its long-awaited proposal to revise the EU rules on the transport of live animals, Regulation (EC) No 1/2005. This revision, part of the broader Farm to Fork Strategy, was meant to align the EU’s animal welfare laws with current scientific knowledge, improve enforcement and respond to growing public concern.
This outdated, vague and poorly enforced Regulation, ignored for too long by Member States unwilling to prioritize meaningful implementation, has directly enabled the terrible suffering, distress and even death of billions of animals on Europe’s roads. Sentient beings, legally recognized in Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), are routinely subjected to overcrowding, dehydration, heat stress, injuries and long, exhausting journeys with no meaningful controls.
Failing to update this Regulation with clear, science-based and enforceable rules, aligned with peer-reviewed, state-of-the-art recommendations, means the EU is turning its back on its moral duty and its own legal and scientific commitments.
The current Regulation: a law that lags behind reality
Regulation (EC) No 1/2005 has been in force since 2007. Since then, systemic issues and violations have been highlighted in countless investigations, NGO reports, even official audits:
- Widespread non-compliance with journey time limits, temperature thresholds and space allowances.
- Inadequate training and resources for competent authorities.
- Cross-border and long-distance transports, where enforcement becomes almost impossible.
- Live exports to non-EU countries, where EU standards are not respected – in breach of CJEU case C-424/13 (Zuchtvieh-Export GmbH), which requires EU welfare law to apply during the full journey, including beyond EU borders.
In 2020, pressure from citizens and civil society finally pushed the European Parliament to establish a Committee of Inquiry on the Protection of Animals during Transport (ANIT). While its conclusions weren’t perfect, the ANIT report clearly exposed systemic failures and issued recommendations that were meant to shape the European Commission’s legislative.
The Commission’s Proposal: Too Little, Too Late?
After repeated delays, the European Commission finally unveiled its proposal for a revised Regulation in December 2023. However, the result falls short of what’s needed.
The improvements proposed are welcome but extremely limited. These include a new maximum journey duration for pigs and cattle and a slightly tightened permitted temperature range for transport, although enforcement mechanisms remain completely unclear. Also, some provisions encouraging digital tracking tools and offering minor improvements for vulnerable animals, such as unweaned calves or heavily pregnant animals.
But many of the shortcomings of the previous Regulation remain. Crucially, the proposal allows live animal exports to continue to third countries where the EU has no ability to enforce its animal welfare standards. There is no mandatory or harmonised system for real-time monitoring of vehicles, and the comprehensive, species-specific recommendations published by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2022 and 2023 are only partially reflected in the legal text. Despite repeated calls for greater transparency, the proposal also fails to establish a centralised, public EU database of transport violations and enforcement actions. In addition, the proposed Regulation continues to rely on national sanctions systems that are highly inconsistent, often weak or even non-existent, and rarely dissuasive – leaving repeated infringements largely unpunished across much of the EU.
The political battle is now in Parliament and under threat
The European Parliament is now discussing the file. Over 3,000 amendments have been tabled by MEPs during the AGRI/TRAN Committee stage, signaling intense debate and sharp divisions on various clauses, some aimed specifically at rolling back welfare improvements. Initial discussions suggest that even the proposal’s limited progress may be weakened further.
Several MEPs seem more interested in pleasing the animal farming industry, transport lobbies and large-scale agri-food players than in making EU law science-based, enforceable, or coherent with the Union’s climate and welfare goals. Citizens’ calls are not reflected the proposed texts of the majority of MEPs in the Agriculture Committee.
At this stage, the risk is real: the revised Regulation may fail to meaningfully improve welfare outcomes. Even worse, it may cement the terrible status quo under the label of reform.
We are actively engaging with MEPs to highlight the urgent need to place animal welfare at the center of the animal transport discussion, particularly in the context of the EU’s commitment to sustainability, resilience and transition toward a more humane and future-ready food system.
We call for
The EU must adopt a more ambitious, science-based and ethically coherent rules. We call on EU legislators to:
- Enforce a ban on live exports to third countries where EU welfare standards cannot be monitored or upheld. 94% of EU citizens as consulted by the Commission in 2021, said they favoured ending live animal exports.
- Ban the transport of unfit, pregnant and unweaned animals.
- Prohibit long-distance live animal transport, with an 8 hours maximum limit.
- 4 hours maximum transport time for old animals, as well as poultry and rabbits.
- Mandatory presence of a veterinarian on transport ships throughout the journey and during loading and unloading.
- Mandate real-time, digital tracking and temperature monitoring for all vehicles.
- Establish an EU-wide, public database of transport compliance and violations.
- Create clear, deterrent-level sanctions for persistent breaches.
- Fully integrate EFSA’s species-specific recommendations into binding legal standards.
Public support for this revision is strong. It should therefore be more than a technical update. It offers an opportunity to make EU law credible, enforceable and reflect the values it claims to uphold.