The plenary session of the European Parliament (EP) has rejected, in a vote held on Wednesday the 22nd, the European Commission project that sought to reduce by half the amount of pesticides (insecticides, herbicides) used in the European Union (EU) in the horizon of 2030 (in relation to the amount currently used).
The draft new Regulation on the sustainable use of phytosanitary products, one of the most daring initiatives of the European Green Deal, received 299 votes against and 207 in favor in the European Parliament on Wednesday, while 121 of the MEPs present abstained.
This proposal to cut the use of pesticides was approved by the European Commission on June 22, 2022 and had received the support of the environment committee of the European Parliament, as a substantial part of the package of measures aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of the EU food system which is also known as the European Green Deal.
The rejection of the plenary session of the European Parliament has occurred due to the majority vote of the Group of the European People's Party (EPP Group), which considers that the proposal to cut the use of pesticides will negatively affect farmers.
"This is a very dark day for the health of society as a whole and for the environment and also for the liberation of farmers from agroindustry," declared after the result the rapporteur of the file, the MEP for Austria Sarah Wiener (Los Greens-The Green Alternative).
After losing the initial vote, the rapporteur asked for a new vote so that the project could be returned to the EP Environment Committee for reformulation (and subsequent debate in the second round), but the MEPs present at the session also rejected this possibility.
Sarah Wiener, in an informative conference after the votes, considered that the legislative project is "dead" in the current European legislature and considered it "very unlikely" that it will go ahead before the 2024 European Parliament elections.
"The Council (EU countries) still has to decide its own position on the proposal to determine whether it is definitively rejected or returned to Parliament for a second reading," the European Parliament explained in a statement.
The European Commission's (EC) original legislative initiative, presented in June last year, set out legally binding targets at national and EU level to reduce the use and risk of chemical pesticides and the use of pesticides by 50%. most dangerous pesticides by 2030.
According to the EC plan, member states would establish their own national reduction targets within parameters to ensure that targets are achieved at EU level, Efe recalls.
However, the proposal has had a complicated parliamentary process due to the differences between the left and right parties and the different points of view of the Environment and Agriculture commissions of the European Parliament.
While the Environment Commission was committed to ambitious objectives to reduce the use of pesticides and placed emphasis on the protection of nature and health, the Agriculture Commission pointed to the impact that the law could have on food security and warned. that there are still not enough alternatives to chemical pesticides.
In the Council of the EU (the Member States), co-legislator of the community club together with the European Parliament, the procedure has not been free of problems either.
Last December, the countries asked the European Commission for an additional impact analysis because the Community Executive had not taken into account the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on agriculture when presenting the proposal.
In July of this year, Brussels published this additional evaluation, in which it assured that the law did not put food security at risk, even if the consequences for agriculture of the war conflict in Ukraine are taken into account.
He stated that "on the contrary, any failure to meet the pesticide reduction target now will have long-term and potentially irreversible effects" on food security in the future.
After that response, the debates between the countries had continued, in recent months as one of the priorities of the Spanish presidency.
This same Monday, during the meeting of EU Agriculture Ministers held in Brussels, several countries expressed their reservations about the legislative project.
The German minister, Cem Özdemir, said he agreed with the general objective of reducing pesticide use by 50% by 2030, but expressed his opposition to the Commission's "strategy" to achieve it.
Her Finnish counterpart, Sari Essayah, expressed her opposition to setting national objectives for each EU Member State because, she said, in her country they do not use "many pesticides." Thus, she considered that it would be "very unfair" to establish national goals for countries that already use little amounts of these chemicals.
