The European Parliament’s rapporteur on the proposal on the sustainable use of pesticides, Sarah Wiener (Greens/EFA, Austrian), sets the bar high in her draft report, which was released on Friday 10 February, including an 80% reduction in the most dangerous plant protection products by 2030.
The draft report, which will shortly be presented to the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment, already includes many amendments which aim to improve the Commission’s proposal in the following areas.
As regards the targets, the rapporteur proposes to focus on the most hazardous pesticides, with a reduction target of 80% by 2030. These pesticides pose a serious threat to health (they are, for example, neurotoxic, carcinogenic, toxic for reproduction or have endocrine disrupting properties) and should have been gradually phased out since 2015.
The rapporteur also proposes shifting the reference period to 2018-2020 (as opposed to 2015-2017 in the proposal), which could penalise countries that made significant efforts between 2015 and 2017.
With regard to sensitive areas (the Commission proposes to eliminate all pesticides in these areas), one of the most controversial points of the proposal, Ms Wiener suggests to exclude nitrate-sensitive areas from the definition, as they would not be relevant to this regulation.
The rapporteur further proposes to restrict the inclusion of ‘areas reported by the Member States to the Nationally designated protected areas inventory’ to those areas where the conservation objectives relate to nature, biodiversity, and/or habitat protection. This would ensure that areas that are protected for unrelated reasons, such as landscape beauty or preservation of historic monuments, were excluded from the definition.
In addition, pesticides approved for organic farming would be allowed in certain types of areas to allow the continuation of specific agricultural activities already taking place there. Further exemptions from the general ban could be granted, subject to certain conditions.
With regard to ‘buffer zones’, the suggested distance of 3 metres from protected areas is not sufficient in Ms Wiener’s view. It would be “too small to prevent pesticides from entering areas protected by spray drift”, she said. Science suggests that effective buffer zones need to be several hundred metres wide to prevent the entry of pesticides. The rapporteur therefore proposes a general buffer zone width of 10 metres and buffer zones of 50 metres for sensitive areas used by vulnerable groups and for the use of the most dangerous pesticides.
One of the most important objectives of the regulation is to facilitate the implementation of integrated pest management. The rapporteur proposes to establish a hierarchy in order to have a reference when implementing this regulation in the Member States. The requirements for integrated pest management are strengthened to ensure that chemical pesticides are only used as a last resort.
Ms Wiener, for whom the costs might not be sufficiently covered by the expenditure under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), admits that a sufficient financial budget is crucial for the implementation of the text.
Alternative solutions are therefore needed. The rapporteur proposes the establishment of a state fund, which could, among other things, be financed by a tax on pesticides, which is already the case in Denmark.
The timetable for the adoption of the amended text in the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment is still uncertain, as MEPs have to wait for new data to be provided by the Commission, at the request of the EU Council, on the impact of the text on food safety (see EUROPE 13087/7).
Link to the draft report in question: https://aeur.eu/f/5ak (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)