At their plenary session on Wednesday 18 September, MEPs rejected two European Commission decisions to authorise residue levels of several pesticides in imported food (see EUROPE 13481/8).
Their opposition was based on the need to protect EU citizens from pesticide residues in imported products and to ensure a level playing field for EU farmers, for whom the use of pesticides is already banned.
The NGO network PAN Europe, which in a press release thanked MEPs “for standing firm”, points out that the pesticides concerned have “proven harmful effects on human health, in particular their carcinogenicity, reproductive toxicity and endocrine disrupting effects”.
The vote in Parliament is “a failure and a disavowal” of the Commission, Christophe Clergeau (S&D, French) told Agence Europe. In his view, the Commission must put an end to its “liberal and free-trade dogmatism”, which had no other aim than to “promote international trade”.
522 MEPs voted in favour of the objection to cyproconazole and spirodiclofen and 516 in favour of the objection to benomyl, carbendazim and thiophanate-methyl.
“You should have seen the dumbfounded look on Manfred Weber’s face: only the EPP MEPs went from abstention to a no vote, after intense lobbying by the Commission”, notes Christophe Clergeau.
The Frenchman explains this massive vote, supported by the Renew Europe MEPs, by “the high level of expectation with regard to mirror clauses”. While he conceded that the result of this vote should not be exaggerated, the Socialist added that it nevertheless showed that “surprising balances of power” could emerge in votes in Parliament on international trade or the defence of small-scale farming.
The Commission will now have to withdraw its proposals. MEPs are already calling for all requests for import tolerances to be refused, and expect the European Commission to lower all maximum residue levels “to the limit of determination (the smallest quantity at which it can be detected)”. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)