Les députés européens doivent voter le durcissement les lois européennes sur les pesticides[en] 

Responding in part to consumer concerns about pesticide residues in food (EurActiv 08/02/06), in July 2006 the Commission proposed a regulation and framework directive designed to tighten EU pesticide authorisation, use and disposal rules (EurActiv 13/07/06). The proposed package is part of the Commission's 6th Environment Action Programme (see our LinksDossier).

Environment ministers endorsed the pesticides strategy, but to the dismay of the Commission, sensitive legislative issues were forwarded to the Agriculture Council during the German EU Presidency (EurActiv 21/02/07).

In June, the Parliament's Environment (ENVI) Committee examined the Commission's proposed framework directive. MEPs voted to tighten restrictions on the use of pesticides, particularly around residential areas (EurActiv 26/06/07).

The 12 September committee vote only concerned the Commission's proposed regulation on pesticide authorisation and marketing. 

The ENVI Committee voted 43 in favour, 12 against (with 3 abstentions) to tighten a number of aspects of the Commission's proposed regulation.

It backed a Commission plan to ban endocrine disrupters and other substances found in certain pesticides that are considered genotoxic or harmful to reproductive health. 

But the committee also voted to add potentially neurotoxic and immunotixic pesticides to the Commission's proposed list of banned substances on the basis of their "intrinsic" risk to humans.

Rapid national authorisation procedures for products containing new substances were rejected by the committee - to the dismay of the pesticide industry, which argued that this will discourage investments and prevent farmers from accessing necessary pesticides in time.

In a move that has been hailed by supporters of the regulation as a driver for innovation in the pesticide industry, MEPs endorsed a "substitution principle", which states that safer, non-toxic pesticide alternatives must be given authorisation preference before "traditional" pesticides if it can be proven that such alternatives are at least equally effective.

MEPs also voted for stronger links with the EU's Water Framework Directive (WFD - see our LinksDossier), whereby the level of concentration of certain pesticides in surface waters would influence their authorisation.

A zone-based authorisation system proposed by the Commission was shot down by MEPs. Under the system, pesticides would be authorised according to three geographic zones in the EU - north, centre and south - with mutual recognition of approval decisions between the zones. MEPs voted to maintain the authority of individual member states to either approve, reject or restrict pesticides approved in other member states. 

A plenary vote on the regulation and the framework directive is expected in late October.

Environmental groups have traditionally clashed with farmers over the level of regulation necessary to ensure consumer and environmental health without jeopardising the livelihood of farmers who depend on pesticides to ensure crop yields (EurActiv 06/03/07).

Euros Jones of the European Crop Protection Association (ECPA) slammed the committee's vote as "a major setback for the principles of sound science and rational decision making". At issue is the "intrinsic" risk criteria used by MEPs to gauge the harmfulness of certain substances, which ECPA argues will "lead to the disappearance of many substances that have long been used safely by farmers and which farmers need to protect their crops from disease", the organisation said in a press release.

ECPA also "regrets the [committee's] decision to impose additional cut-off criteria and the decision to remove the possibility of rapid national authorisations for products containing new substances". 

MEP and rapporteur Hiltrud Breyer, a German member of the Greens/EFA group, would have preferred even tighter restrictions to emerge from the committee's vote. She regretted that "the provisions for applying mandatory standards of integrated pest management and for promoting non-chemical alternatives in crop management were not supported" by MEPs.

In a joint press release from environmental NGOs the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Health & Environment Alliance (HEAL) and Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, the committee's vote was hailed as "greatly improving the Commission's original weak proposal". 

Monica Guarinoni of HEAL expects pesticide producers and farmers' representatives to step up pressure on MEPs to reject certain aspects of the ENVI committee's vote before the October plenary session.