Important information for plant breeders: Change in Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) fees regulation as of 1st April 2020

In order to ease plant breeders’ financial planning for the year 2020, we would like to inform all applicants that a decision has been taken by the European Commission to update the CPVO fees regulation.

The most significant change concerns examination fees, which are linked to the costs the CPVO pays examination offices for technical examinations. These fees were adjusted to match the real costs of the technical examinations per group category.

Pending publication in the Official Journal of the European Union, new fees will be applicable as of 1st April 2020.

What will change as of 1st April 2020?

For all applications with an application date on 1st April 2020 or later, the following fees will be applicable:

• Application fees: whilst online application fees remain unchanged (EUR 450), paper-based applications will cost EUR 800 instead of EUR 650 currently. Applicants benefiting from the online fee shall only receive electronic communications with the CPVO during the entire application procedure.
• Examination fees: examination fees will be adjusted to reflect the real costs charged by the Examination Offices for each group category – as per the table available below.
• Annual fees: annual fees remain unchanged.

Examination fee per group category - as of 1st April 2020:

	Cost group	Fee (in EUR)
Agricultural group
1	Potato	2 050
2	Oilseed rape	2 150
3	Grasses	2 920
4	Other agricultural species	1 900
Fruit group
5	Apple	3 665
6	Strawberry	3 400
7	Other fruit species	3 460
Ornamental group
8	Ornamental living greenhouse	2 425
9	Ornamental living outdoor	2 420
10	Ornamental non-living greenhouse	2 400
11	Ornamental non-living outdoor	2 200
12	Ornamental special	3 900
Vegetable group
13	Vegetable greenhouse	2 920
14	Vegetable outdoor	2 660

Background

The CPVO is a demand-driven agency. Whilst revenues generated by annual fees are relatively stable, revenues generated by application fees and examination fees vary significantly from year to year. As regards costs, the principal component are the examination costs and costs for staff.

The CPVO aims to set fees in order to have a balanced budget, and also to respect its Administrative Council decision that the free reserve should be of the order of 50% of the payments budget. In this respect, fees payable to the CPVO by applicants should be reviewed every 4 years.

In March 2019, the CPVO Administrative Council invited the European Commission to update the fees regulation to ensure full cost recovery for technical examinations and to keep the annual fees unchanged (Regulation (EC) No 1238/95). The fees were adopted on a proposal of the CPVO Administrative Council and after a public consultation organised by the European Commission.