The European Commission refutes the analysis of the European Parliament’s legal service, according to which the Commission's proposal enabling pesticides that disrupt the endocrine system to be identified is reportedly illegal. The Commission's letter to the Parliament's environment committee on 18 October therefore suggests that it will not amend its formulation of the grounds for derogation during its recasting work.
In the middle of June, the Commission presented a raft of criteria enabling the identification (and ultimate ban) of chemical substances that have a hazardous effect on the hormonal system (“endocrine disruptors”) (see EUROPE 11573). More specifically, it retained three criteria from the 2002 definition of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) International Programme on Chemical Safety: (1) the undesirable effects on human health; (2) the endocrine mode of action; (3) a correlation between the two.
The Commission also proposed to review the derogations allowing certain hazardous substances to continue on the market: wheras companies can currently obtain a derogation in cases of “negligible exposure” for pesticides and of “negligible risk” to exposure for biocides, the Commission proposes to harmonise the two regulations and only retain “negligible risk” for the two kinds of products. The Commission’s legislative proposals were widely criticised, however, with certain member states (such as Sweden and France), MEPs and health organisations believing that the proposals did not sufficiently protect human health. The European Parliament even produced a (non-binding) legal opinion concluding that the Commission was going beyond its competences by amending the derogations applicable to pesticides.
In his letter, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis does not mention carrying out the recasting he undertook with his services at the request of member states (see EUROPE 11632). He concentrates on the question of derogations and defends his positions on this. He points out that his proposals were approved by the Commission's legal service during the interservice consultation and that the Commission is permitted to amend Regulation 1107/2009 on pesticides “with regard to scientific and technical knowledge” (Article 78 (1) (a)).
Agencies consulted. In a separate letter dated 17 October, the director-general of the Commission's DG Health, Xavier Prats Monné, urges the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency to publish common guidelines to accompany the implementation of the scientific criteria proposed as regards the scientific identification of danger. He calls on the two agencies to treat this dossier as a priority, given the urgent need for criteria and the political sensitivity of the dossier. Prats Monné proposes that they present the outlines for these guidelines in December 2016, with a more detailed version towards April-May 2017. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)