Several NGOs are asking Belgium not to go along with the majority of member states who will likely ask the European Commission to carry out an additional impact assessment on EU pesticide reduction objectives at the Council summit on Monday.
On Monday, during the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council (Energy), many member states could ask the Commission to conduct a new impact assessment of the reduction objectives listed in the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive (SUD).
States and EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski believe that a new impact assessment is warranted, saying that the pesticide reduction effort could undermine food security in a market that is even tenser due to the Ukraine war.
But according to NGO Nature&Progrès, such a decision which would be adopted “without political debate or a formal vote”, could “throw the whole Green Deal off tracks”, and more specifically, the bloc’s strategy for sustainable agriculture and in favour of biodiversity, of which pesticides reduction is a central goal.
“Using food safety as a dubious argument, attempts have been made for some time to delay and weaken this legislative breakthrough,” the NGO wrote in a press release published Friday.
On 7 December, 16 NGOs – including Nature&Progrès, Natagora, WWF and Greenpeace – sent a letter to all competent regional and federal ministers to ensure that Belgium takes a clear position to continue the negotiations on the future EU regulation aiming in particular to endorse the objectives of reducing pesticides by 50% by 2030.
“We are very concerned about the continuous attacks aiming at watering down [the directive] and delaying its adoption at the expense of all European citizens,” a letter which was sent to EURACTIV reads.
On the other hand, Nature&Progrès estimates that a recent government agreement shows it is not “ambitious” enough towards reducing chemical materials to support the upcoming EU legislation.
According to the NGO, for Belgian and EU citizens, pesticides pose a major risk to health and the environment, and this is reflected in the European Citizens’ Initiative “Save Bees and Farmers”, which 1.2 million European citizens – mostly from Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands – have supported and which was received by the Commission last month.
Recently, Nature&Progrès and another NGO, Pesticide Action Network (PAN), took legal action and jointly asked the Belgian Council of State to suspend the authorisation of two cypermethrin-based insecticides, a substance allegedly linked to health and environmental damages: Sherpa 100 EW et Aphicar 100 EW.
(Anne-Sophie Gayet | EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
