The European Parliament's PEST Special Committee, which is responsible for shedding light on the risk assessment procedure in the EU after the controversial renewal of the glyphosate licence, will vote on the draft report by Norbert Lins (EPP, Germany) and Bart Staes (Greens/EFA, Belgium) on Thursday 6 December.
Considerable compromise work has been done on this text, which already constitutes a compromise between two co-rapporteurs who set out with very different visions (see EUROPE 12135, 12105).
1141 amendments had been tabled by the full parliamentary committee. “They reflect 8 months of work. The more consistent the vote, the stronger Parliament's position will be. There are common positions on the essential elements," said committee chair Eric Andrieu (S&D, France), on 27 November. On 29 and 30 November, final negotiations between the groups took place again. The 51 compromise amendments will provide the structure for the report. "It is a question of revising the protocol for the authorisation of molecules and making concrete recommendations. This is the mission we set ourselves so that we would not get lost in the wealth of challenges ", he recalled.
These compromises represent a variety of political configurations. Most of them include the Greens/EFA, S&D, EPP, ALDE, GUE/NGL and ELDD groups (except on glyphosate, in the latter case).
" We need evolution, not revolution. The compromise amendments were negotiated in this spirit to underpin, expand and improve the best authorisation system in the world ", said Norbert Lins. The report will enable us to have a more effective, more transparent and robust system, but no one will be 100% satisfied. Bart Staes hopes for " a substantial text that gives the Commission a good working basis".
The compromises include: - the objective of the Pesticides Regulation (1107/2009) and the precautionary principle; - the basic principles of risk assessment (all political groups agree on this point); - the lack of resources; - the burden of proof; - the assessment of active substances; - neonicotinoids; - cumulative effects; - vulnerable groups; - post-market entry monitoring; - mandatory risk mitigation measures; - glyphosate.
Jytte Guteland (S&D, Sweden) said it was surprising that there was no compromise on banning pesticides that are endocrine disrupters.
Anthea McIntyre (ECR, UK) deplored that "the compromises insist on a discourse that demonises the current regulatory approach and especially the role played by industry in studies and national competent authorities concerning marketing authorisation".
Ania Hazekamp (GUE/NGL, Netherlands), referring to "the thousands of pages of documents handled by one of the largest multinationals", said that the text was too "watered down" to provide answers to the questions citizens were asking themselves. "The problems are cited, but the rapporteurs do not refer to the substance of the case. The whole glyphosate aspect is ignored. Which the WHO has also said. The relationship between EFSA and industry is not mentioned. The precautionary principle will suffer.
Mireille d'Ornano (ELDD, France) criticised the fact that, out of 57 pages of compromise, "the words failure, defect, fault, do not appear once", that the words "bees or pollinators " do not appear either, and that " Monsanto" appears only once in a recital.
Many amendments will be voted on separately in the parliamentary committee.
Parliament's vote in plenary session is expected to take place on Wednesday 16 January in Strasbourg. This will be requested at the Group Presidents' Conference on 13 December or 9 January. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)