• The chemical substances contained in pesticides could no longer be subject to time-limited authorisations.
• This is what the European Commission has proposed in a simplification package, with exceptions for the most concerning components.
• According to the NGO Pan Europe, this amounts to deregulation in favour of the agrochemical industry at the expense of human and environmental health.

The use of chemical substances in pesticides in the European Union is subject to authorisations that carry an expiry date (usually ten or fifteen years) and are periodically renewed or refused. Now the European Commission is considering making authorisations for active substances used in pesticides open-ended, with certain exceptions — for instance for components that may raise "concerns for human or animal health or for the environment".

How the Commission justifies open-ended authorisations for pesticides

According to what emerges from the draft simplification package on food and feed that the European executive is expected to adopt on 16 December, the proposal stems from the consideration that the majority of approved active substances have already completed at least one renewal process and that new ones should have better toxicological and ecotoxicological properties.

Any time limits on approvals may be set where deemed appropriate "to ensure a high level of protection of human and animal health and of the environment". The Commission and member states will also be able to periodically select a number of active substances for which to launch a full renewal procedure, while retaining the possibility of ad hoc reviews.

Among other simplification measures, the Commission also intends to accelerate EU market access for biocontrol substances and products — that is, natural alternatives to chemical pesticides — "through a clear definition for their identification" and by prioritising the approval and authorisation procedures for such substances.

Pan Europe: "Industry interests placed above health and the environment"

According to Pesticide Action Network Europe, an NGO working against pesticide use and to promote alternative solutions, this decision would mean abandoning science in favour of industry interests, which would prevail over the importance of health and the environment. What is being called simplification is, in the activists' view, actually deregulation. The proposal would grant an open-ended European approval for active substances in pesticides, discouraging industry from examining further negative effects on health or the environment while simultaneously removing the obligation for member states to consider the most recent independent scientific evidence during national authorisations of plant protection products.

"Highly toxic pesticides such as chlorpyrifos, which affects children's brain development, or mancozeb and thiacloprid, which impair reproduction, or the PFAS flufenacet, which disrupts the endocrine system, would never have been banned under such a weakened system. Similarly, neonicotinoids harmful to bees would still be in use today," commented Pan Europe's scientific director, Angeliki Lyssimachou.

Pan Europe's executive director, Martin Dermine, stated: "The European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety is, with this move, seeking to take Europe back more than 30 years, to an era when pesticide toxicity was barely assessed for the protection of citizens and the environment. By ignoring the most recent scientific evidence and keeping banned pesticides on the market for longer, the Commission is leading us into a dark age in which science is disregarded and profit is placed ahead of public health and environmental protection." Furthermore, according to Dermine, "the Commission is using market access for more biocontrol alternatives as a Trojan horse to dismantle the fundamental elements of pesticide protection guaranteed by EU regulation".

Last October, 138 civil society, scientific, water and farming organisations from across Europe wrote to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calling for improved enforcement of EU pesticide legislation and denouncing any attempt to weaken it.

Pesticides in Italy on the decline, organic farming on the rise

Meanwhile, in recent days the Osservatorio Agrofarma has released data showing that between 2021 and 2023 sales of plant protection products in Italy fell by 18 per cent compared with the 2012–2014 three-year period — a more marked reduction than in other European countries. At the same time, low-risk substances, active ingredients of biological origin and non-chemical active substances recorded growth of +133 per cent over the same period.