The egg market in Germany and the EU at Easter 2012

While laying hen management in conventional cages was abandoned in Germany, Sweden and Austria on 1 January 2010 and these EU member states endured the friction created by the switchover two years previously, keeping hens in battery cages, which was abolished by EU law, continued to remain permissible in other EU states until the latest possible deadline of 31 December 2011. As of 1 January 2012 the EU-wide ban on keeping laying hens in conventional cages became binding. The EU Commission should admonish 13 member states, since several million battery hens were still being kept in these countries at the beginning of 2012. Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom in particular are still in the middle of the switchover process.