Luxembourg, 13/07/2007 (Agence Europe) - Sweden has won Case T-229/04 against the Commission at the Court of First Instance over the Commission's authorisation of the use of paraquat in weed-killers. The judgement, issued on Wednesday 11 July, annuls the directive authorising paraquat in 2003 on the grounds that the Commission did not meet the procedural assessment requirements. The Commission can now carry out a new assessment of the chemical in line with the proper procedures or appeal to the Court of Justice. Either way, the use of paraquat will be banned until potential confirmation of the authorisation in the future.
Anders Kruse, representing the Swedish government in this case, welcomed the ruling. He told this newsletter that the Court had accepted all Sweden's arguments except two points of lesser interest. He admitted that the decision to take the case to court had been motivated more from principle than national interests. This issue does not concern the Swedish government directly because paraquat has been banned in Sweden since the 1980s and no requests had ever been received to market it, but in Sweden's view, the Commission had not followed the proper procedures for making this type of decision, especially given the danger of this highly toxic chemical. The manufacturers do not seem worried about the de facto ban on their product. 'In any event, these weed-killers are not a significant proportion of the crop protection products we sell in the EU,' said a spokesperson for Syngenta, the EU's leading supplier of paraquat-containing weed-killers. He added that although Syngenta (formed from the merger of the agri-chemical arms of Astrazeneca and Novartis in 2000) had not been involved in the case, 'it will work with the regulatory authorities and the Commission to analyse the issues raised by the Court.'
After publishing an assessment report on paraquat, the Commission adopted Directive 2003/112 which includes the chemical in Annex I (authorised under certain conditions). Sweden, backed by Denmark, Austria and Finland, took the case to the Court of First Instance on the grounds that there are several shortcomings in the directive. Firstly, although there are studies on the link between paraquat and Parkinson's Disease, that issue was never referred to in the Commission's reports which make no mention of the link. Research shows that the use of a knapsack crop duster can lead to excessive exposure to paraquat even when safety procedures are respected. Thirdly, in order to assess the effects of paraquat on the health of hares and bird embryos, only two areas of use were assessed but the Commission did not give any reason why it did not assess the 12 other types of use. The authorisation to market the weed-killers has been withdrawn and the use of paraquat is banned with immediate effect. The Commission has two months in which to lodge an appeal. According to Philip Tod, a spokesman for the health commissioner, the Commission 'is carefully examining the legal details of the Court's judgement and is considering all the legal consequences which flow from it as a matter of urgency.'
Paraquat is an active substance which is a component of one of the three most widely-used weed-killers in the world, including gramoxone (sold by Syngenta). It acts as a non-selective, broad-spectrum herbicide destroying the green tissue of the plant by drying the leaves. (cd)