Deadlock on EU pesticides bill after scientists call for pause

EU governments are deadlocked on how to proceed with a major overhaul to the bloc’s pesticides rules following a sustained pushback from scientists and countries outside the EU.

The revisions to the pesticides regulation form part of a food-and-feed ‘Omnibus’ law proposed by the EU Commission last December and are primarily aimed at reducing bureaucracy for European farmers by making it easier to authorise and use pesticides.

But there are deep divisions among member states about some proposals, particularly the revised thresholds on maximum residue levels of chemicals.

Earlier this week, the Irish EU council presidency abandoned plans to get diplomats to adopt a formal negotiating position on the file.

For their part, a group of more than 500 scientists signed an open letter to the commission on 16 September demanding a pause on the file pending “an independent assessment, whether carried out by parliament’s own research service or by an equivalent independent body.”

“Given the scale of the changes under consideration, and in a broader context in which the scientific community is increasingly called upon to warn of cumulative environmental and health pressures, we believe that responsible policymaking calls for caution rather than speed,” the letter says.

Under the proposal, residue limits for certain pesticides banned in the EU could be lowered to the lowest level laboratories can reliably detect, even when those substances remain legally-used in exporting countries.

In order to avoid leaving any residue on fruits and vegetables, producers would essentially have to stop using the substance in question.

Benjamin Fox is our trade and geopolitics editor. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He is based in Nairobi, Kenya, although he often reports from London.