The European Commission would like to avoid any further objections from the European Parliament over criteria for endocrine disruptors and in Parliament’s environment committee on 11 October, the Commission made it clear, as a way of putting pressure, that its decision on pesticides and the future general strategy would depend on how Parliament behaved over the biocides question.
Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the hormonal system and can cause negative side effects to health and the environment. The European Commission is legally required to present (and it is doing so two and a half years late) scientific criteria for determining the endocrine disrupting properties of chemicals present in biocides (Regulation 528/2012/EU) and pesticides (Regulation 1107/2009/EC). On 4 October, the European Parliament passed a resolution opposing the implementation regulation for aspects dealing with pesticides. It says the Commission does not have the power to introduce a new clause to allow the sale of active substances designed to disrupt the endocrine system of various non-vertebrate organisms (see EUROPE 11822).
At this stage, MEPs’ objections are limited to the implementation regulation for pesticides, but they have the option until 4 November of issuing an objection to the delegated regulation on biocides.
At the European Commission, speaking on 11 October, the head of the pesticides and biocides unit at DG Health, Klaus Berend, clearly called on MEPs not to block the proposal on biocides. He said the Council was in the process of deciding to not block conditions for the delegated act on biocides to come into force.
Quizzed about the next stages, he said it would depend on what happened in Parliament with the biocides regulation. He said new proposals and other proposals all depended on it and the Commission had made it clear in the past that it wants to present a European strategy regulating the presence of endocrine disruptors in toys, cosmetics and food packaging. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)