On Wednesday, 17 July, experts from EU Member States approved the European Commission’s proposal aiming to modify the uniform principles pertaining to the pharmaceutical product risk assessment for bees. These are the criteria that Member States must apply when evaluating dossiers for the approval of active substances and for the authorisation of plant protection products.
The green light was given by a qualified majority in the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food, and Feed (PAFF Committee).
This measure is only a very small part of the 2013 EFSA guidance document on pesticide risk assessment for bees—a document that the Commission was initially proposing to validate with an implementing decision before Member States got the institution to ask the EFSA to modify it, the Greens/EFA had denounced in the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12292/14).
“The Commission welcomes the endorsement by the Member States of a measure modifying the Uniform Principles for the assessment of the risks from plant protection products to bees that will allow the implementation by the Member States of a part of the EFSA Bee Guidance Document”, Health and Food Safety spokeswoman Anca Paduraru told EUROPE.
For its part, the NGO Pesticide Action Europe (PAN Europe) regrets that, six years after the guidance document was presented, little progress has been made in protecting bees from toxic pesticides.
“Pesticide industry lobbyists together with pro-industrial agriculture Member States did a terrible job. They thus put the Commission in an uncomfortable position as the most up-to-date scientific knowledge will not be used before at least three years [...]. Bee toxic pesticides will stay on the market! Refusing to implement the Bee Guidance Document is simply illegal,” Martin Dermine of PAN Europe comments in a statement.
Reiterating that last year 76% of Member States backed the near-total ban on neonicotinoids, he lamented that “when it comes to respecting the ban or going further by assessing all pesticides the way neonicotinoids were assessed, Member States stand on the side of the agro-business”. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)