Yesterday, the main European media published the highlights of the rapporteur’s proposal for the European Parliament’s ENVI Committee for the EU’s legislation on the sustainable use of pesticides regulation (SUR). This proposal would aim, among other things, to reduce the use of “more hazardous plant protection products” by over 80% based on 2018-2020 use. This would put the ENVI Committee’s proposal well above the Commission’s Farm to Fork proposal of 50% on a 2015-2017 basis.
Copa and Cogeca recall that a risk assessment of active substances used in plant-protection products should be science based and transparent, including for more hazardous ones. From the evidence available, this proposed target is not based on any impact assessment, nor does it provide any agronomic details on its approach. As the 50% reduction target was already not solidly backed by scientific or technical evidence; we find it even more difficult to see how an 80% reduction target could be justified! Let alone imagine its impact inside and outside the EU. Furthermore, this draft proposal adds massive obligatory and legal constraints for Member States and farmers which appear simply unmanageable.
We continue to be left with an approach that is fully disconnected from the realities experienced by farmers, not considering what has already been done in the past in terms of implementing practices in Integrated Pest Management and even neglecting the idea of looking at technical solutions or alternatives. Meanwhile asking for an impact assessment to understand the real consequences of such radical changes is considered an obstruction by the rapporteur!
Let us recall that all studies carried out in the Farm to Fork Strategy, based on the Commission’s 50% target approach, point in the same direction: a significant reduction in production, additional costs for consumers beyond the inflation experienced in certain countries today, and a massive carbon leakage effect towards third countries who will produce a substantial part of our food tomorrow.
We need to remember that for the past decade everywhere in Europe, farmers and cooperatives have been engaged and committed to input reductions and the use of alternative solutions to synthetic plant protection products. However, we need time, new tools, and financial and political support to continue this path. We share the general objective of reducing inputs as presented in the Green Deal Communication and the Farm to Fork Strategy, but we warn that a simplistic target-based policy approach will be the most damaging and least effective solution for EU farming.
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