FCI at the EU Platform on Animal Welfare – Brussels, 26 June 2026
The FCI was one of the speakers at the EU Platform on Animal Welfare, held in Brussels on Friday 26 June 2026.
An audience of 120 persons, made up of NGOs, veterinarians, welfare organisations and other major stakeholders, representing all 27 EU countries, plus some representatives from other European countries attended.
In the afternoon session, a long part was dedicated to the new EU regulation, adopted on 17 June 2026, “Welfare of Cats and Dogs and their Traceability”, its scope and its implementation and another part was dedicated to the presentation of the Coalition “Choose Health” made of different stakeholders of the Dog World in general, and of which FCI is part.
The FCI repeatedly insisted on the importance of the official registered Dog World, the expertise, experience and know-how of its Members -and in this particular context, its EU Members- acquired over the last 5 to -even-13-14 decades.
We also emphasized that -unfortunately- the registered Dog World (within EU) represents only about13% of the dogs living in the EU. Still, we insisted that we are convinced that a huge majority of these 13% is bred according to excellent welfare standards, is health tested, and has to be provided with export pedigrees once sold to another country, ensuring thus minimum traceability.
We also made it clear that none of the FCI breed standards require (or even ignore) extreme conformation traits and that health and welfare are a priority in all our breed standards and other official documents. We concluded by saying, which was shared by some of the speakers, how glad we were to have the law approved, with no breed banning. We also expressed concerns that the new regulation might drive some breeders to move to the grey zone to be in a position to evade and circumvent the new norms, as much as possible.
We finally added that the matter to get acquainted with and adhere to the new regulation was before all an individual matter (breeders) and that the FCI had already been in touch with its Members for a couple of years, in order to raise awareness about the new law and to invite them to get in touch, nationally, with their national authorities.
We concluded saying that we look forward to keeping being part of the talks when it comes to the Delegated Acts, which will be of utmost importance for the future of our pedigree dogs breeding.
Thuin, 29 June 2026
Y.De Clercq
FCI Executive Director
