In brief
- A farm comes under the new European environmental rules from 1,167 fattening pigs, 700 sows, 21,429 laying hens, 40,000 broilers, 28,000 ducks or 9,334 turkeys. Those figures are not written in the act. The decision refers to Annex Ia to Directive 2010/75/EU, which sets the threshold in livestock units, abbreviated LSU, a unit of account that turns head of livestock into points: 350 LSU for pigs, 300 LSU for farms with laying hens only and 280 LSU for the other poultry categories. The number of animals is obtained by dividing the threshold by the conversion rate for each category.
- A farm that falls under the rules is given maximum values per animal place per year, not for the herd as a whole. A new house for fattening pigs may not exceed 2.0 kilograms of ammonia per place per year, an existing one 2.4 kilograms, and a farm brought into scope only now 2.6 kilograms. For laying hens in cage systems the limit is 0.04 kilograms in new houses and 0.08 in existing ones. Separately, the nitrogen and phosphorus excreted by the animals have ceilings of their own: 12 kilograms of nitrogen per fattening pig place per year, 0.80 kilograms per laying hen.
- Nothing applies in 2026. Article 4 of the decision phases application in by capacity: by 8 October 2030 at the latest for installations of at least 600 LSU, by 8 October 2031 for those of at least 400 LSU and by 8 October 2032 for all the others. Romania has not yet adopted the law transposing the new chapter on livestock rearing, although the deadline was 1 July 2026, so the actual permitting regime for medium-sized farms is not settled in national law.
Published: Official Journal of the European Union, L series, 2026/2260 of 16 October 2026
In force from: 16 October 2026, the date of publication in the Official Journal of the European Union; the obligations for farms, however, are phased in, by 8 October 2030, 8 October 2031 and 8 October 2032 at the latest, depending on capacity
A pig farmer in Timiș with 1,500 fattening places and an egg producer in Dâmbovița with 25,000 hens have so far had nothing to do with European industrial emissions law. They were below the thresholds that put a farm in the same regime as a refinery or a cement works. Since 16 October 2026 there is, for the first time, a text that says exactly what each of them will have to do: Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2026/2260, published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L series, under the number 2026/2260.
The decision runs to 68 pages, around 50 tables and a single underlying idea: for every pig and poultry farm in the Union above a given threshold, the conditions under which it may operate are the same, wherever the farm happens to be. Until now each national authority set the conditions in the permit, case by case, on the basis of best available techniques conclusions that were indicative. Now there are fixed European figures for ammonia to air, for the nitrogen and phosphorus excreted by the animals, plus a list of obligations on design, manure storage and monitoring.
The act is neither a directive nor a regulation. It is a decision addressed to the Member States, adopted by the Commission under Article 70i(2) of Directive 2010/75/EU on industrial emissions, also known as the IED. That means the obligations do not reach the farmer directly. They reach the 27 Member States, which have to write them into farm permits or registrations through their own legislation. In Romania, that legislation does not yet exist in the required form.
What it changes in practice
It sets the threshold at which a farm comes under the rules, but not in head of livestock. The decision refers to Annex Ia to Directive 2010/75/EU, and that Annex measures capacity in livestock units. The thresholds are 350 LSU for the rearing of pigs, 300 LSU for farms keeping laying hens only, 280 LSU for the other poultry categories and 380 LSU for mixed pig and poultry farms. The conversion rates, also from Annex Ia, are 0.300 LSU for a fattening pig, 0.500 for a sow over 50 kilograms, 0.027 for a piglet up to 20 kilograms, 0.014 for a laying hen, 0.007 for a broiler, 0.030 for a turkey, 0.010 for a duck and 0.020 for a goose. Dividing the threshold by the conversion rate gives the number of places at which the farm comes under the rules: 1,167 fattening pigs, 700 sows, 21,429 laying hens, 40,000 broilers, 9,334 turkeys, 28,000 ducks, 14,000 geese.
It imposes maximum values for ammonia to air, per animal place per year. For pigs, Table 1.3 of the Annex gives four categories and three columns. Weaners: 0.4 kilograms of ammonia per place per year in new installations, 0.5 in existing ones, 0.7 in installations with solid manure or a deep pit used with nutritional management alone. Fattening pigs: 2.0, then 2.4 and 3.5. Sows in heat and gestating sows: 2.3, then 2.7 and 4.0. Lactating sows together with their piglets: 3.6, then 4.2 and 7.0. For poultry, Table 2.3 gives 0.04 and 0.08 kilograms for laying hens in cage systems, 0.10 and 0.13 for those in cage-free systems, 0.05 and 0.07 for broilers, and for ducks and turkeys a single value, the same for new and for existing houses: 0.17 for ducks, 0.55 for male turkeys, 0.44 for mixed flocks of male and female turkeys, 0.35 for female turkeys.
It also caps what the animals excrete, not only what leaves through the ventilation. Total nitrogen excreted may not exceed 3.6 kilograms per weaner place per year, 12.0 kilograms per fattening pig place, 25.0 kilograms per place for a sow with piglets. Total phosphorus excreted, expressed as diphosphorus pentoxide, is capped at 1.5, 4.5 and 12.0 kilograms for the same categories. For poultry, nitrogen runs from 0.55 kilograms per broiler place up to 2.00 kilograms per male turkey place, and phosphorus from 0.20 to 1.00 kilograms. These values are achieved through the feed formula rather than through filters, so they land directly on the farm’s nutritionist.
It turns a list of practices that used to be recommendations into obligations. The 20 uniform conditions cover the design of animal housing, dust, odour, noise, water, energy, the storage of slurry and solid manure, their on-farm processing, landspreading and the storage of dead animals. For each one the decision lists techniques and states where they apply and where they do not. Manure storage facilities and animal houses are to be inspected and maintained periodically.
It introduces annual monitoring. Nitrogen and phosphorus excreted are monitored through a mass balance or through emission factors, once a year. Ammonia to air is monitored at least for each animal house, also once a year. Methane and dust carry monitoring requirements too, dust only where an impact on sensitive receptors is expected or has been demonstrated, and the same goes for odour. Under Article 70d(1) of Directive 2010/75/EU, the data are kept for at least five years and made available to the authority on request.
It leaves the Member States four safety valves. First: techniques other than those in the Annex may be used, if the Member State scientifically validates that they ensure at least an equivalent level of protection. Second: the Member State may apply the maximum values across all the houses on the same farm, instead of each house separately, provided the farm’s total emission does not increase. Third: instead of absolute maximum values, the Member State may use a relative system, with minimum reduction requirements measured against an internationally recognised reference system. Fourth: in systems that improve animal welfare, free farrowing for lactating sows for instance, the maximum values may be disapplied. In every case the methodologies and assumptions have to be fully documented and made public.
It phases application in three tranches. Article 4 states that the decision applies within four years of 8 October 2026 for installations of at least 600 LSU, within five years for those of at least 400 LSU and within six years for all the others. That gives 8 October 2030, 8 October 2031 and 8 October 2032. “Within” means a Member State may set shorter deadlines, not longer ones.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Until 4 August 2024, the date on which Directive (EU) 2024/1785 entered into force, European industrial emissions law caught only intensive rearing in the livestock sector, from 40,000 poultry places, 2,000 places for pigs over 30 kilograms or 750 sow places. Those thresholds are still in force in Romania today, at point 6.6 of Annex no. 1 to Law no. 278/2013 on industrial emissions. Farms below them held an ordinary environmental permit rather than an integrated permit, and had no European ammonia value to comply with.
The new thresholds, from Annex Ia, redraw the map unevenly. For fattening pigs the threshold drops from 2,000 places to 1,167, that is, 833 places lower, a fall of 41.7%. For sows it drops from 750 to 700 places, only 6.7%. For laying hens it drops from 40,000 to 21,429 places, 46.4%. For broilers nothing changes at all: 280 LSU divided by 0.007 gives exactly 40,000 places, the old threshold. As a result, a broiler producer who was at the limit stays at the limit, while an egg producer of the same size now comes under the rules.
The second substantive change is the nature of the figures. Until now the conditions in a large farm’s permit were built on the best available techniques conclusions for the intensive rearing of poultry and pigs, which the national authority applied in the light of local conditions. Decision 2026/2260 gives single maximum values, and recitals (9) and (10) say plainly what they are: the ammonia values are emission limit values, and the values for nitrogen and phosphorus excreted are environmental performance limit values, within the meaning of Articles 70d(2) and 70f(1) of the directive. Exceeding them is no longer a departure from a recommendation; it is a breach of a limit value.
The third change is administrative. Article 70c(1) of Directive 2010/75/EU requires that no installation listed in Annex Ia operate without a permit or without being registered, and allows Member States to use registration procedures they already have. The permit proper remains an option for the Member State, for intensive rearing above 40,000 poultry places, 2,000 places for pigs over 30 kilograms or 750 sow places. In other words, farms brought into scope only now do not automatically get an integrated environmental permit; they may simply be registered, if the Member State takes the lighter route.
The fourth change concerns the public. Article 70g of the directive requires that documents relating to permitting or registration, inspection reports included, be published free of charge on the internet, while Article 70h guarantees access to justice against the authority’s decisions, through a procedure that is not prohibitively expensive. The neighbour of a large farm will therefore be able to read online what has been authorised there and how much ammonia has been measured.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The figures are the same across the Union. A Romanian farmer and a Dutch farmer of the same size have the same ammonia ceiling per animal place, which removes a competitive advantage built on permissive permits.
- The deadlines are long and known in advance. Between publication of the decision and the first deadline there are four years minus eight days, and for the last tranche almost six years. A livestock house pays for itself within that span, so the investment can be planned rather than improvised.
- The techniques are not mandatory. Article 2(1) allows any other technique, if the Member State scientifically validates that it protects the environment at least as well. The farmer can choose the cheap solution for his own farm rather than the one on the list.
- Organic and extensive pig farms stay outside. Annex Ia excludes the rearing of pigs under organic production and rearing at a density below 2 LSU per hectare, on land used only for grazing or for forage, with animals kept outdoors for a significant part of the year.
- Animal welfare is not penalised. Note (17) to Table 1.3 allows the maximum values to be disapplied to systems that improve welfare, and for poultry the values do not apply to organic production. Without that valve, a cage-free house would have been penalised precisely for being better for the animal.
- The farmer does not pay for science changing its mind. Recital (14) requires Member States not to penalise farmers who applied compliant techniques, where an emission factor is later revised and takes them out of compliance, and to help them return to it.
What remains a problem
- The threshold is nowhere written in head of livestock. Neither the decision nor its Annex says “from 1,167 pigs”. The farmer has to open another annex, in another act, and do a division, in order to find out whether his farm is caught.
- Romania has no law. The deadline for transposing Directive (EU) 2024/1785 was 1 July 2026, and as at 16 October 2026, 107 days later, no Romanian act taking over the chapter on livestock rearing has been published. Until then it is not known whether medium-sized farms will be permitted or merely registered, nor which documents will have to be filed.
- The proportionate requirements promised stay confined to pigs. Recital (4) announces proportionate requirements for farms that did not fall within the scope before 4 August 2024, but in the Annex they appear only in three notes to the pig table. A farm with 25,000 laying hens, brought under the rules only now, complies with the same values as one that has held an integrated permit since 2013.
- Methane is named but has no ceiling. Uniform Condition UC 2 requires methane emissions to be prevented or reduced, and UC 16 requires them to be monitored, yet no table gives a maximum value for methane. The gas with the largest climate effect in livestock farming is left without a figure.
- Monitoring costs money on a small farm too. An annual mass balance for nitrogen and phosphorus and an annual estimate of ammonia for each house call for feeding, stock and manure records that many farms of 1,200 pigs do not keep today in the form required.
- Farms close to the threshold will be tempted to split up. Article 70b of the directive provides for an aggregation rule for nearby installations belonging to the same operator or to operators linked economically or legally, but the Commission guidance clarifying how it applies is only announced for 5 August 2028.
Practical advice
- Work out your farm’s capacity in livestock units before anything else, using the maximum number of places rather than the average stock. Multiply the places by the conversion rate for the category and add them up. If the result is below 350 LSU for pigs, below 300 LSU for a farm with laying hens only, below 280 LSU for other poultry or below 380 LSU for a mixed farm, the farm does not come under these rules.
- Check which deadline tranche you fall into, because it is not the same as the entry threshold. Above 600 LSU the deadline is 8 October 2030, above 400 LSU it is 8 October 2031, and everyone else has until 8 October 2032. A farm with 750 sows has 375 LSU, so it catches the last tranche, even if it has held an integrated environmental permit for over a decade.
- If you keep weaners, look carefully at where the 20-kilogram line falls. A piglet up to 20 kilograms counts 0.027 LSU, while above 20 kilograms it goes into “other pigs”, at 0.300 LSU, 11 times more. The weight at which you sell or reclassify your piglets decides whether the farm is above the threshold.
- Ask your nutritionist for a calculation of nitrogen and phosphorus excreted per animal place per year, in the form used in Tables 1.1, 1.2, 2.1 and 2.2. These ceilings are met through the feed formula, through phase feeding and through authorised additives, not through construction, so they are the cheapest part of compliance.
- Do not buy ammonia abatement equipment before Romania adopts its law. The Member State may choose the relative system, with minimum reduction requirements, instead of absolute values, and it may apply the ceilings across the whole farm rather than to each house. In either case the best technical solution is a different one.
- Start keeping records now, because records cost nothing. Feed consumption by category, stock numbers, the quantity of manure produced, the date and place of each landspreading, the inspections of manure stores. Article 70d(1) of the directive requires monitoring data to be kept for at least five years, and a mass balance cannot be reconstructed without earlier records.
- If you have several companies on the same site or on nearby sites, treat them as a single farm when calculating the threshold, until the Commission guidance of 2028 appears. Article 70b states expressly that the aggregation rule may not be used to circumvent the threshold.
- If you are in organic production, check which exemption applies to you. For pigs, an organic farm falls outside the scope. For poultry, an organic farm stays within the scope, so it needs a permit or a registration and complies with the qualitative conditions, but the maximum values for nitrogen, phosphorus and ammonia do not apply to it.
Frequently asked questions
I have 900 fattening pigs. Does this concern me?
Do I have to obtain an integrated environmental permit?
By when do I have to comply?
Which authority decides in Romania?
What happens if I exceed a limit value?
If my farm is older, do I get gentler limits?
Cage-free hens have higher limits. Why?
What about cattle?
Do I have to measure ammonia with instruments?
Does the decision apply directly, or is a Romanian law needed?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Annex, Section 2.2, the heading, in the Romanian version of the decision. The Romanian text heads the section „Emisiile de amoniac provenite de la adăposturile de animale existente în cadrul fermelor de păsări”, that is, ammonia emissions from existing animal houses in poultry farms, and so confines the section to existing housing. Table 2.3, which sits in that same section, nevertheless carries a column for new installations, with stricter values, and Uniform Condition UC 4 requires animal housing to be “designed and operated” with abatement techniques, which concerns precisely the houses still to be built. The English version carries no such restriction: the section reads “Ammonia emissions from animal houses in poultry farms”, with the same construction as the pig counterpart, Section 1.2, “Ammonia and methane emissions from animal houses in pig farms”. The flaw therefore exists only in the Romanian version, and it is real there: a poultry farmer who reads the heading may conclude that the values do not apply to a new house, the exact opposite of what the table provides.
- Annex, Section 3.3, the last sentence, read against Section 5.3. Section 3.3, on the on-farm processing of manure, ends with the words “In addition, the emerging techniques in Section 5.3 have been identified”. Section 5.3 of the same Annex has nothing but a heading, “On-farm processing of manure”, with no content whatsoever: it is followed straight away by Section 5.4, “Monitoring”. The cross-reference leads to an empty section, verified both in the text published in the Official Journal of the European Union and in the facsimile of the page, page 67 in the Romanian version. The other cross-references of the same kind, to Sections 4.5, 4.7.3, 4.8.2 and 4.8.5, do have a counterpart in the act.
Editorial analysis
The decision is well built where it gives figures and weak where it ought to say who it applies to. The most important numbers in the whole structure, the thresholds at which a farm comes under the rules, are not in it. They have to be looked up in Annex Ia to Directive 2010/75/EU, where they are expressed in livestock units, and converted through a table of rates sitting in the same Annex. A farmer who wants to know whether the act concerns him has a division to perform that nobody writes out for him: 350 divided by 0.300 gives 1,166.67, so 1,167 fattening pig places. For laying hens, 300 divided by 0.014 gives 21,428.6, so 21,429 places. For broilers, 280 divided by 0.007 gives exactly 40,000, the threshold that existed before. The result is an effect the text does not own up to: the reform moves the line by 41.7% for fattening pigs and by 46.4% for laying hens, but by zero for broilers, the largest poultry sector in Romania.
The second problem comes out of combining the entry threshold with the deadline tranches. The threshold is reached at 350 LSU, while the first compliance tranche starts at 600 LSU. 600 LSU divided by 0.300 gives exactly 2,000 fattening pig places, which is precisely the old threshold of Directive 2010/75/EU. Farms that have held an integrated environmental permit since 2013 are therefore the first to reach their deadline, in 2030. Except that the other old threshold, the 750 sow places, gives 375 LSU, below the 400 line, so a sow farm that has been under the European regime for more than a decade catches the last tranche, 8 October 2032, two years later than a fattening pig farm of the same administrative vintage. The same arithmetic also shows that a producer with 40,000 broilers, 280 LSU, has a 2032 deadline, while an egg producer with 42,858 hens, 600 LSU, has 2030. The phasing follows neither seniority in the environmental regime nor impact, only the number of points.
The third observation is about proportionality. Recital (4) says that the economic feasibility of certain techniques varies with farm size and that it is appropriate to set proportionate requirements for farms that did not fall within the scope before 4 August 2024. In the Annex, the promise materialises in three footnotes to Table 1.3, all of them on pigs: 0.7 instead of 0.5 for weaners, 2.6 instead of 2.4 for fattening pigs, 5.6 instead of 4.2 for lactating sows. For fattening pigs, the most widespread category, the relaxation is 8.3%, which does not even cover the difference between a new installation and an existing one. For poultry there is no note of that kind at all: farms with 21,429 to 40,000 laying hens, the only ones genuinely brought in from outside the regime, comply with the same values as any existing installation. The definition of a “newly covered farm”, written specially into the definitions section, is used three times in 68 pages.
The fourth thing visible only through comparison is the relationship between the deadlines imposed on the farmer and those the European administration set for itself. Article 70i(2) of the directive required the Commission to adopt the implementing act by 1 September 2026; it was adopted on 8 October 2026, 37 days later. The rule on aggregating nearby farms, the one that decides whether a group of companies is a single installation and therefore whether it crosses the threshold, is in Article 70b, but the guidance explaining how to apply it is announced for 5 August 2028. The Member States had to transpose by 1 July 2026, two years before the guidance. Romania has not transposed: as at 16 October 2026, 107 days past the deadline, no act taking over Chapter VIa has been published, and Law no. 278/2013 still carries the 2013 thresholds at point 6.6 of Annex no. 1. The Romanian farmer thus has a European decision with exact figures, but no domestic rule telling him which door to take them to.
What should be changed
- A table of equivalents in head of livestock, published by the Commission. The same thresholds, expressed in animal places as well for each category, with a note that the reference value remains the one in livestock units. In practice, the farmer would learn from the first page whether the act concerns him, and the authority would stop receiving questions whose answer is a division.
- Aligning the deadline tranches with the entry threshold. The first tranche should start with the farms that were already under the European regime, not at 600 LSU. The effect on the ground: farms with 750 sows, which have environmental staff and an integrated permit dating from 2013, would no longer get the longest deadline in the Union, and small farms would no longer compete with them at the same date.
- Proportionate requirements for poultry too, not only for pigs. Notes equivalent to those at Table 1.3, for newly covered poultry farms, and in particular for laying hens, the only poultry segment where the threshold has come down. The consequence: the whole investment would not fall in the first cycle on farms that have never had environmental obligations of this kind.
- A ceiling for methane, or dropping the reference to it. UC 2 requires methane to be reduced and UC 16 requires it to be monitored, with no maximum value anywhere. The consequence: either a figure appears against which an inspection can be measured, or the farmer stops paying to monitor a gas for which there is no compliance criterion.
- Repairing the heading of Section 2.2 and filling in Section 5.3, by corrigendum in the Official Journal of the European Union. In practice, the argument that the ammonia values do not apply to new poultry houses would disappear, and the cross-reference in Section 3.3 would lead to real content.
- Swift adoption of the Romanian law on industrial emissions and emissions from livestock rearing, specifying the regime. The result on the ground: it would be known whether farms between the thresholds are permitted or registered, which documents are filed, with which county agency and at what charge, with time to prepare before 2030.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Journal of the European Union, L series, 2026/2260 of 16 October 2026 68 pages PDF, 1.4 MB
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.