MEPs on the European Parliament Agriculture committee called on Wednesday 20 June for a more transparent, simpler, faster and better harmonised authorisation process to be put in place for pesticides in order to increase the availability of safe and innovative plant protection products for farmers.
The committee voted by 32 to 11, with 1 abstention, to adopt an opinion for the environment, public health and food safety committee on the implementation of regulation 1107/2009 on plant protection products.
It calls for the current system to be revamped to make it faster and less complex. MEPs note that it currently takes over 11 years, on average 200 scientific studies and over €220 million to bring a plant protection product onto the market. Since the 2009 regulation came into force, only 11 new substances have been authorised in the EU.
The availability of broad range and reasonably-priced plant protection products is crucial for reducing use. MEPs call on the Commission to do more to promote precision farming techniques, which would make pest control more targeted and environmentally sustainable. They argue for increased development and availability of low-risk pesticides with natural substances on the market and they want a fast-track procedure for their authorisation.
The current system should simplify and speed up evaluations and authorisations, and ensure that emergency authorisation be allowed only for plant protection substances with no harmful effects on human or animal health and no unacceptable effects on the environment, the committee says.
It calls on the Commission to come up with proposals to further enhance the transparency of authorisation and evaluation processes, to increase independence of those in charge of studies, to tackle the problem of conflicts of interests and to improve the functioning of the mutual recognition system among member states.
Lastly, MEPs suggest that developing an EU-level authorisation procedure, which would be coordinated by the Commission, and setting up a single EU authority, a one-stop-shop, responsible for all aspects of evaluation and authorisation of active substances, could dramatically reduce costs while ensuring a uniformly high level of health and environmental protection. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)