The Farm to Fork Strategy aims, among others, at reducing dependency on chemical pesticides, also by facilitating the placing on the market of biological active substances, including microorganisms. To support this objective, this Regulation aims at specifying approval criteria for microbial active substances in Annex II of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009, in order to appropriately reflect the particularities of microbial active substances, which are different from chemical substances.