EU environmental watchdog criticises calls to stall pesticides cut

The EU’s environmental watchdog has hit back at calls to stall a 50% cut in the use and risks of synthetic pesticides and a 20% cut in fertiliser use by 2030, arguing that the Ukraine crisis provides scant justification for delay.

EU states with the backing of powerful farm unions and centre-right parties have blocked the proposed pesticide reform unless the European Commission completes a second impact study by 28 June to assuage food security fears.

Among campaigners and scientists, anxieties are rife that the bloc’s flagship green farming pledge could be unceremoniously buried.

Dario Piselli, a European Environment Agency (EEA) expert and author of a new analysis published on Wednesday, said there were “compelling” reasons not to hesitate further with the draft law.

“There’s limited justification to use the war as a reason for postponing action,” he told the Guardian. “Food security as an issue is not only to do with immediate food supply – and a lot of the concerns there have subsided a bit compared to the beginning of the war – but with medium-long term security which is influenced by other things [like] climate change and the impact of a loss of biodiversity on food production.”

Since 1990, farmland bird and grassland butterfly populations have plunged by more than 30% in Europe, while almost one in 10 of the continent’s bees face extinction, mainly because of habitat loss caused by intensified agriculture.

In 2020, pesticide thresholds for human safety were breached at more than one in five rivers and lakes across Europe, the EEA paper says and 83% of agricultural soils tested in 2019 were also found to contain pesticide residues.

Almost the same percentage – 84% – of people tested across five European countries in 2021 were found to contain at least two pesticides in their bloodstreams, according to a large human biomonitoring study cited by the paper.

Environmentalists say this is partly down to increased pesticide sales volumes in the EU, which remained stable between 2011 and 2020 at about 350,000 tonnes a year, compared with annual averages closer to 220,000 tonnes between 1992 and 2003.

One EU country, Denmark, has cut sales by using pesticide taxes linked to product toxicity, but the commission does not expect the present modest rises in pesticide prices to affect demand.

By contrast, fertiliser sales in countries such as Germany have fallen by up to 40% after prices doubled between May 2020 and the end of 2022, owing to high gas costs and war-related supply disruptions.

One EU diplomat said this had caused “mixed feelings” in Europe’s capitals about the commission’s green farming reform. “Last year the Germans were desperate to push the proposal forward but how this will end up I don’t know,” the official said.

Another EU diplomat added: “If the pesticides regulation is dead, there is no one to blame but the commission itself. The moment it stepped away from a scientific and evidence-based approach in favour of ideology and dogmatic solutions, it condemned its flagship legal proposal.”

The commission’s targets for EU nations, which take into account actions already taken, would force Italy to cut its pesticide use and risks by 62%, Germany by 55% and France and Spain by 54%, according to a report in Politico.

Hostility to the measures is strong among Europe’s agricultural business class and in several governments, where the EU’s green deal commissioner, Frans Timmermans, is viewed darkly.

“Unless EU citizens suffer from hunger and protest in the streets, he does not care,” the first diplomat said.

In a concession to such sentiments, Brussels last year shelved a proposed ban on pesticide use in ecologically sensitive areas – so long as low-risk pesticides were used instead. But it will not abandon the goal of a less chemically drenched countryside, despite the “complex” impacts of the Ukraine conflict on food security, said Stefan De Keersmaecker, a commission spokesperson.

“We must continue making progress in the discussions so that the proposal can become a reality to protect farmers, pesticide users, citizens, vulnerable populations, and the environment,” he said. “European citizens have a clear desire to reduce the use and risk of pesticides.”