On Wednesday 7 December, Sarah Wiener (Greens/EFA, Austrian), the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the sustainable use of pesticides in the Parliament’s Environment Committee, criticised the forthcoming EU Council decision asking the European Commission to carry out an additional impact assessment on the effects of the proposal in question on the agricultural sector.
Speaking to the press, Ms Wiener called on Member States not to freeze negotiations on the proposal on the sustainable use of pesticides.
The draft decision requesting an additional impact assessment, obtained by EUROPE, will be discussed on 10 December in the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States to the EU (Coreper). The text is expected to be adopted at the EU Council on 19 December.
Ms Wiener acknowledged that negotiations in the European Parliament had not started because of the fight over competences between the Parliament’s Environment and Agriculture Committees on the different articles of the text. She expects to present her draft report on pesticides in mid-January.
“Many Member States are not ready to discuss. They would like to postpone decisions by asking for new assessments”, Ms Wiener explained. In her view, EU countries do not want to reduce the use of pesticides.
Claude Gruffat (Greens/EFA, French), the group’s shadow rapporteur in the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture, estimated that it would take the Commission months, if not years, to deal with the Council’s requests for further studies on farm yields or prices.
He regretted that the Council has not asked for analyses on poisoning caused by pesticides or soil fertility. The Council, he said, is “slowing down the process and bypassing the legislative power of the European Parliament” to bury the proposal during this term.
Link to the draft Council decision: https://aeur.eu/f/4iu (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)