The NGO PAN Europe is alarmed by the Commission’s plan to leave the assessment of co-formulants - toxic chemical substances added to pesticides to increase their effectiveness - to the Member States without providing them with the required data on their toxicity.
In a position paper published on Thursday 10 November, a week before the end of the current public consultation (see EUROPE 13057/31), the NGO points out that, for a majority of these chemicals, regulators have no information on their impact on citizens’ health and the environment.
It believes that the draft implementing regulation does not comply with Regulation (EU) 1107/2009 governing the market authorisation of pesticides - the regulation under which the European Commission is supposed to have regulate co-formulants since 2016 and which states that active substances must have no “harmful effect on human or animal health or an unacceptable effect on the environment”.
PAN Europe advocates a harmonised and centralised approach, in which the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) would be required to carry out the risk assessment on the basis of the required data, as it does for active substances in pesticides.
The issue was recently raised in the European Parliament’s Environment Committee during an exchange of views with the Executive Director of EFSA (see EUROPE 13059/25).
See the position paper: https://aeur.eu/f/40f (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)