Top EU officials fought for higher pesticide exposure - secret documents show

9 May 2019, Brussels - Newly released European Commission documents reveal a fight to cripple important European pesticide protections.

The haul of over 600 documents was obtained after a two year legal battle won by the Pesticide Action Network Europe (PAN). They show top officials trying to protect chemical and farming interests from incoming European rules that were expected to directly ban up to 32 (page 115) endocrine disrupting (EDC) pesticides. The law set out specifically to protect human, animal health and the environment and followed 25 years of mounting scientific evidence linking EDC pesticides to severe human health impacts and gender-bending effects on animals. They may be the cause of birth defects that shocked France last year and made international news headlines.

The secret papers, released by order of European Court of Justice, show an internal struggle to define scientific criteria for identifying and banning EDC pesticides. Outnumbered environment and research department officials are seen resisting attempts by agriculture, enterprise, industry and even health department officials to water down the criteria by introducing non-scientific factors, such as farming profitability. They were joined by the Commission secretary general who orchestrated [documents 42, 559] a flawed impact assessment process. Its bizarre early results downplayed health impacts [document 258]; found that the more pesticides that remained in use, the less the impact on health and the environment [document 560]; and that the fewer EDC pesticides identified, the better [document 273].

The two year row was brought to an end by the European Court of Justice. In a case brought by an alarmed [document 259] Swedish government, the court ruled that non-scientific aspects should play no part in setting of EDC criteria and the impact assessment was illegal.

The hostile majority of departments were trying to derail a “golden shield” protection for health and environment known as the ‘hazards approach’ to pesticides, according to PAN. Unique to Europe, the legal principle means that any pesticide found to be either EDC, carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic, persistent or bioaccumulative, even at very low doses, will be quickly banned throughout Europe. This has led to rejected food imports and trade friction with regions with weaker protections.

CONTINUE READING ON www.pan-europe.info