EU parliamentarians, capitals and policymakers agreed on new rules on the treatment of cats and dogs on Tuesday, dodging the political limbo plaguing other laws on animal welfare.

The new rules create uniform standards for how cats and dogs can be treated and housed in the EU, and introduce measures to trace them to combat illegal trade. 

Proposed by the Commission in 2023, the new standards have now been provisionally agreed after political negotiations with the European Parliament and the Council — the EU’s co-legislators.

In contrast, rules to update animal welfare standards during their transport, proposed in the same year, have not yet reached political negotiations between the institutions. Instead the file is drowning under thousands of amendments in the Parliament while member countries struggle to reach an agreement in the Council. 

Nonetheless, Danish Agriculture Minister Jacob Jensen celebrated Tuesday’s agreement as “the first of its kind” and “an important step in the right direction for animal welfare in Europe.” 

Similarly, European Conservatives and Reformists MEP Veronika Vrecionová, the Parliament’s lead negotiator, said the rules will “make it harder for abusive and illegal operators to hide” and will push back against “those who see animals as a means of quick profit.” MEP Tilly Metz, the Greens negotiator for the Parliament on the new rules, said the EU is now “finally reversing the trend of growing illegal trade and taking an important step forward.” 

But getting to this point was not free of political dysfunction. Last-minute amendments made changes to the committee position on the new rules before it was put to a full vote in the legislature. While a huge majority of MEPs then voted in favor of the Parliament’s negotiating position, the lead negotiator’s own political group questioned how realistic the approach was going into talks.

Plans to make microchipping and registration mandatory for all dogs and cats across the bloc then ran into legal troubles in the Council — although the proposal eventually made it into the final agreement with minor caveats.

Regardless, animal welfare activists are taking the win and lauding what Georgia Diamantopoulou, head of the European policy office of the Four Paws animal welfare organization, described as the “beginning of the end of the illegal trade in dogs and cats in the EU.”