EU ruling against circumvention of the pesticide ban

The European Court of Justice today published a landmark ruling on emergency authorizations of banned and hazardous pesticides in agriculture. The Court declared the granting of emergency authorizations for the treatment of seeds with pesticides that have been explicitly banned to be inadmissible. This had previously been a common practice to circumvent the pesticide ban.

"This ruling ensures that dangerous pesticides that have been banned due to unacceptable effects on the environment or health cannot be kept on the market via the loophole of an 'emergency authorization'," says Helmut Burtscher-Schaden, biochemist at GLOBAL 2000.

https://news.pro.earth/2023/01/16/oesterreich-belegt-platz-1-bei-der-umgehung-von-eu-pestizidverboten/

Hans Muilerman, chemicals officer of the European Pesticide Action Network (PAN Europe), which had lodged a similar complaint in Belgium, says:

"PAN Europe has been fighting for many years against this systematic abuse of the derogation system by Member States. This ruling is a great success for the environmental movement! This ruling will put an end to almost half of the emergency authorizations granted by EU countries for banned pesticides."

 

Today's ECJ ruling relates to questions raised by the Belgian administrative court following a complaint by PAN Europe, Nature & Progrès Belgium and a Belgian beekeeper. GLOBAL 2000 had lodged an analogous complaint in Austria.

According to information from the Federal Office for Food Safety (BAES), an application for a new emergency authorization of neonicotinoids for the treatment of sugar beet is currently pending in Austria. However, the ECJ ruling makes it clear that approval of this application by the BAES, which reports to the Minister of Agriculture, would be clearly unlawful. (ots)

Our pro.earth. conclusion: An important step to put a stop to this practice!