The EU is opening the whole hemp plant to farm-gate purchase

If you are trying to buy hemp in Europe, the first question is not “is the plant legal?” It is “which part of the plant am I buying, and under which code does it move?” For years fibre and seed had a cleaner agricultural path than leaves and flowers, even when the crop sat under the same 0.3% THC ceiling. That split made offtake messy: a farm could grow a compliant variety and still struggle to sell the whole biomass.

In July 2025 the European Commission put a proposal on the table that goes the other way. It would expand the Common Market Organisation so that all parts of the hemp plant — including flowers, leaves and roots under CN code 1211 90 86 — sit as agricultural products, provided CAP conditions are met. The stated aim is legal certainty for farmers and a bigger bioeconomy, not a back door into narcotic cannabis.

What that means for movement and purchase

A buyer in Ireland or Germany who wants fibre, seed, or other compliant plant parts would be purchasing an agricultural good with a Union-level production and marketing rule, not improvising a national grey market. Imports would be updated for consistency with those production rules. The 0.3% THC limit and certified-seed / catalogue-variety conditions stay. Public-health and food law still sit on top for anything destined to be eaten or sold as a consumer extract.

That is the positive read: more of the plant can be contracted, invoiced, and moved as a crop. A processor can write a specification against the whole plant. A farm can sell more than the stalk. Rehemption’s job is to keep that purchase inside the agricultural box — variety, THC, COA, intended use — so the load is a commodity, not a customs argument.

What the industry is asking for next

The European Industrial Hemp Association welcomed the whole-plant recognition and, in February 2026, asked legislators to pair it with a harmonised 1% THC cultivation threshold under the CAP 2028–2032 debate. Their case is agronomic: certified varieties can still drift with climate and stress, and a harvest should not fall over on a decimal. That ask is not yet law. The Commission’s current proposal keeps 0.3%.

Until the files close in Council and Parliament, we contract to the rule that is in force, and we watch the files that would make European hemp easier to grow, buy, and move at scale.