On Thursday, 25 January, PAN Europe and five partner organisations announced that they had submitted a request for an internal review of the European Commission’s decision to renew the authorisation of glyphosate for 10 years (implementing regulation 2023/2660) the day before—the first step before potentially bringing the matter before the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). A group of NGOs and French citizens also submitted a request that same day.
To support their request, PAN Europe, ClientEarth (EU), Générations futures (France), GLOBAL 2000 (Austria), PAN Germany, and PAN Netherlands cite a breach of the EU’s ‘Pesticides’ Regulation (1107/2009) and failures on the part of the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to uphold their obligation to protect human health and the environment (see EUROPE 13298/28).
“Scientific evidence on the important toxicity of glyphosate on health and the environment was not correctly communicated to the Commission by EFSA and ECHA. Farmers are the first victims of this. The Commission reapproved glyphosate despite the available information on its toxicity”, commented Angeliki Lyssimachou, the head of science at PAN Europe.
Under the EU’s new Aarhus Regulation (Regulation 2021/1767) on access to justice in environmental matters, NGOs can now challenge decisions made by EU bodies, but they must first request an internal review (see EUROPE 12806/8).
The European Commission now has a period of 16 to 22 weeks (maximum) to respond. If it does not review its decision, the matter will be brought before the CJEU within the 2 months and 10 days that NGOs have to challenge its response before the court.
The request for an internal review that ‘Secrets Toxiques’, a coalition of 80 French NGOs, submitted on Wednesday notably focuses on the lack of a comprehensive assessment of the glyphosate product as it is used and not just the active substance—a procedure supported by French MEPs in the Greens/EFA and The Left groups.
In the event the European Commission refuses to review its decision, the two actions will be combined before the Court of Justice.
“It’s the co-formulants that need to be assessed. We can hide behind European agencies’ lack of resources, but there is a lack of willingness, accepted by EFSA, to assess the toxicity of commercial products”, MEP Benoît Biteau (Greens/EFA) told the press.
Stressing that the European Parliament was not a co-legislator on this issue, Christophe Clergeau (Greens/EFA) felt, “[It is] all the more natural to support this fight, since we do not have a regulation on the sustainable use of pesticides (SUR) that would reduce the use of glyphosate”.
As for Manon Aubry (The Left), she emphasised the paradox of being reduced, as an MEP, to having to join an NGO action “in order to enforce European law when we are supposed to be making the law”.
See the EU’s ‘Pesticides’ Regulation: https://aeur.eu/f/alc
The Aarhus Regulation: https://aeur.eu/f/akf
The European Commission regulation reauthorising glyphosate: https://aeur.eu/f/alb (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)