European Parliament votes to improve the pesticide authorisation system

Europe must urgently improve its pesticide authorisation system to ensure protection from harm caused by pesticides is the message sent by the European Parliament today, who adopted the PEST Committee report calling for independence, objectivity, transparency and better use of science in the whole procedure. This is a milestone in the long-needed pesticide risk assessment reform in Europe, highlights PAN Europe.

In an effort to re-build citizens’ trust, today a great majority of Members of the European Parliament voted in favour (526 in favour, 66 against) of the PEST Committee report that highlights the shortfalls of the current pesticide authorisation system and calls for substantial improvements in the process to ensure that pesticides used in agriculture and management of green/urban areas cause no adverse effects to humans, animals and the environment, as the EU law demands.

Following the exposure of misconducts in the assessment of glyphosate in Europe and the Europeans Citizens’ Initiative calling to ban glyphosate and reform the risk assessment procedure, the European Parliament set up a Special Committee last year to investigate the authorisation procedure for pesticides (PEST committee). After 9 months of investigations, hearings, missions to EFSA, IARC and INRA as well as the commissioning of studies, the Committee reported that the current system is failing to achieve its purpose, highlighting the need for urgent change, which received a clear support from the Parliament today. The Parliament also opposed to all European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) amendments aiming to “destroy” the report.

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