PAN Europe denounces pesticides provision

The European group Pesticide Action Network Europe (PAN Europe) has slammed the provision to support a priori a revision of the European criteria for the exclusion of pesticides endocrine disruptors and ask to withdraw this provision from the national text of the current public consultation.

PAN Europe congratulated the French government for its commitment to adopt a
national strategy on the issue of endocrine disruptors (SNPE), which it says includes significant progress in particular recognizing the new paradigm posed by the specific action of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs): however, it contains a provision to
support at European level a major setback for the recent legislation concerning Pesticide
2009).

If this provision, to which both national NGOs and MEPs participating in the
working group preparing the strategy were opposed, were kept, it would "clearly mark the end of French ambitions and claims to be a leading actor, voluntary and responsible in this area of public health and innovation on the European and international scene", PAN Europe stated.

The proposed text expects consultation to come back on the a priori exclusion of pesticides recognized as endocrine disruptors, which PAN Europe says "changes the fundamental principles of the European law...substituting it with some sort of risk assessment, which is not present under the EU Regulation 1107/2009. Indeed, the 1107/2009 European Regulation is based on the intrinsic hazard of pesticides recognized endocrine disruptors and not on an assessment of the risk for different types of people".

"Keeping the text in this article would be nothing less than empty the meaning of the only European legislation providing for a priori exclusion of pesticide endocrine disrupting. Such a step backwards is not supposed to be done in a national strategy for EDCs claiming on the contrary to increase the level of security of its citizens in this area. For sure it should not be kept in a paper presented by a government that claims to make French agriculture a model of agroecology," said PAN Europe President François Veillerette. "We urge the French government to remove this provision without delay from the text."

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