A draft agreement appears to be pushing the European Commission towards authorising glyphosate for a further 9 years. The Strasbourg Parliament had suggested 7.
9 years, not 15, but not 7 either, as the European Parliament recently requested. This appears to be the compromise reached by the European Commission, which must decide on the new authorisation — the current one expires in June — to use glyphosate within the borders of the 28 member states of the Union. Glyphosate is the world's most widely used herbicide, but associations, governments and even international organisations have raised serious doubts about the health damage it may cause. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (Iarc) has classified it as "probably carcinogenic", while the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) has stated that it is "unlikely that glyphosate poses a carcinogenic hazard to humans", although at the same time it proposes "new safety levels that will make the control of residues in food more stringent".
The European Commission's draft comes after the deadlock of 8 March, when any decision was deferred due to the firm opposition from Italy, France and the Netherlands to a new authorisation for the use of glyphosate. That opposition prevented the qualified majority needed for approval from being reached. For this reason the Commission is seeking "a broad compromise to achieve a large majority of member states, arriving at a definitive decision", as stated after the March failure by EU Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis.
The next meeting of the committee that assesses the authorisation of pesticides in Europe is scheduled for 18 and 19 May in Brussels.