Six days after the renewal of the authorization of glyphosate for ten years, this is a new “black day” for the environment. On Wednesday, November 22, the European Parliament rejected a legislative project aimed at halving the use of pesticides in the European Union (EU) by 2030, effectively burying this crucial environmental text, a few months before the elections from June 2024.
A crucial element of the EU Green Deal, this legislation proposed in June 2022 by the European Commission planned to halve (compared to the period 2015-2017) by 2030 the use and risks of chemical plant protection products. The European People’s Party (EPP, right) passed amendments aimed at considerably weakening this text which was, in return, rejected by 299 votes (207 for, 121 abstentions) by MEPs meeting in plenary session.
The latter also refused any referral to the parliamentary environment committee; enough to effectively put an end to the future of this text, which deeply divided the member states.
Biodiversity and farmers’ health at stake
The rapporteur of the text, the ecologist Sarah Wiener, judged that it was “a black day” for the environment and farmers. Parliament “rejected this disfigured law [by the EPP amendments], the conservatives are endangering the health of farmers and biodiversity by fighting at all costs against the reduction of pesticides,” added the German MEP (Greens). ) Jutta Paulus.
The PPE group fiercely opposed the text, in unison with the organization of the majority agricultural unions (Copa-Cogeca) and states hostile to the text, against a backdrop of growing resistance to EU environmental regulations, considered too restrictive and likely, according to them, to reduce yields.
“Today is a good day for farmers and for everyone who thinks that the EU should refrain from imposing new burdens on them,” said German MEP (EPP) Peter Liese. “The Commission’s shaky proposal has suffered a snub, it is time to stop playing the sorcerer’s apprentice when it comes to environmental policy and take into account the realities of farmers on the ground,” adds French MEP (EPP) Anne Sander.
The majority agricultural organizations applauded this vote: “Finally! The European Parliament recognizes that the “pesticides” regulation was poorly calibrated, unrealistic, unfunded, but a pure ideological text”, greeted the president of Copa-Cogeca, Christiane Lambert.