With the draft EU Regulation on Sustainable Use of Pesticides that it is preparing, the European Commission intends to address the implementation gaps in the Directive of the same name (SUP Directive) and help the EU to achieve the objectives of reducing the use and risks of chemical pesticides and the most hazardous ones by 50% by 2030 - objectives that are common to the ‘Farm to Fork Strategy’ (F2F) and the EU Biodiversity Strategy.
The draft regulation, as seen by EUROPE, sets reduction targets that would be binding at both national and EU level, with flexibilities for the EU27, much to the dismay of environmental NGOs.
Thus, Member States would set their own national reduction targets on the basis of established criteria and could deviate from the 50% level of the Union’s targets under a binding formula. This will allow Member States to justify taking into account actual or expected changes in national circumstances since 2011 and progress in setting national targets.
The Commission is expected to be able to justify an increase in targets in certain cases and to publish trends in the EU’s reduction targets for 2030.
The draft regulation provides for indicative targets for alternatives to chemical pesticides, listed in Annex III (as in the current Directive).
According to the draft, the use of all chemical pesticides would be banned in sensitive areas such as urban green spaces and sites of the pan-European network of protected natural areas Natura 2000.
The text sets out what the Member States’ action plans must contain and the requirements for public consultation and consistency with the strategic plans of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
It also sets out requirements for the use, storage, sale and disposal of pesticides and the inspection of pesticide application equipment. It provides, as well, for training in use and risk awareness and sets out measures for integrated pest management.
Professional users would be obliged to keep records in relation to integrated pest management.
PAN Europe denounces a lack of ambition. “The European Commission misses here a unique opportunity to set a series of principles to put our agriculture on a virtuous path and move away from pesticides. The basics of Integrated Pest Management are not made mandatory and synthetic pesticides remain at the centre of agricultural practices”, said Martin Dermine, a Health and Environment policy officer at PAN Europe (Pesticide Action Network Europe).
The NGO advocates that basic and cost-effective principles such as long-term crop rotation, use of resistant varieties and mechanical weeding become mandatory to automatically reduce the needs in pesticides.
It also criticises the fact that the Commission proposes to take into account Member States’ efforts since 2011 to reduce highly toxic pesticides “when EU law says this category of pesticides should have been banned since 10 years”.
However, the NGO welcomes the ban on the use of chemical pesticides in public spaces and Natura 2000 areas.
Link to the draft: https://aeur.eu/f/7J (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)