During the evening of Monday 12 March, “PEST”, Parliament’s special committee responsible for shedding full light on pesticide authorisation procedure within the EU after the controversial renewal of the glyphosate licence, appointed its chair and vice-chair. It decided that its first working meeting would be on 12 April.
Composed of 30 members from across the political groups, the committee will have nine months as of 12 March to carry out this task (see EUROPE 11967).
“We have a duty to succeed. This special committee will have to restore citizens’ confidence in the European pesticide approval process”, said Eric Andrieu of France. It came as no surprise that he was appointed committee chairman. In a press release, he underlines the need to “lay the foundations for new practices in order to guarantee the independence of the Union’s decision-making process”.
The PEST special committee will have the following vice chairs: Boleslaw Piecha (ECR, Poland), Frédérique Ries (ALDE, Belgium) and Katerina Konecna (GUE/NGL, Czech Republic). The co-rapporteurs will be: Norbert Lins (EPP, Germany) and Bart Stae (Greens/EFA, Belgium).
The appointments, which had already been the subject of agreement within the political groups, were adopted by acclamation during the constituent meeting of the special committee, in Strasbourg. The chair of the committee and the coordinators of the political groups will meet on Thursday 22 March to draw up the calendar of work. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)