PAN Europe, an NGO campaigning for the sustainable use of pesticides, announced on Thursday 1 September that it has lodged a formal complaint with the European Court of Justice against the November 2021 decision to renew the authorisation in the EU of cypermethrin, a widely used and highly dangerous pyrethroid insecticide, for another 7 years.
The NGO, supported by the organisation SumOfUs, criticises the European Commission for not banning this pesticide active substance on the basis of the major concerns highlighted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in its July 2018 conclusions.
EFSA had indeed identified human endocrine disrupting properties, genotoxicity and extreme toxicity to aquatic life and bees as areas of critical concern.
A considerable amount of missing data prevented the scientific agency from finalising the risk assessment of the substance.
PAN Europe considers that the re-approval of cypermethrin does not comply with EU legislation in terms of human and environmental protection and that this pesticide should have been banned in 2016.
“The recent revision of the Aarhus Regulation allows us to challenge this maladministration. We hope the Court of Justice of the EU will fix this and force the European Commission to base its decisions on science”, comments Martin Dermine, coordinator of PAN Europe, in a statement.
Last July, the NGO brought a case before the Court of Justice for the extension of the authorisation of the pesticide Dimoxystrobin (see EUROPE 12989/1).
See EFSA’s conclusions on the peer review of cypermethrin: https://aeur.eu/f/2wf (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)