The European Parliament has outright rejected a proposal on the EU’s pesticide reduction plan, effectively killing off the regulation in a move lamented by green groups but celebrated by EU farmer associations.
The contentious sustainable use of pesticides regulation (SUR) proposal aimed to slash the use and risk of pesticides in half by 2030, as set out in the EU’s flagship food policy, the Farm to Fork strategy.
After months of back and forth, the European Parliament attempted to hammer out its final position on the file but came up empty-handed after lawmakers ultimately voted to reject the text entirely thanks to a series of amendments – many of which were put forward by the conservative right wing of the Parliament – which scrapped the core elements of the SUR.
This included, for example, the procedure for setting national reduction targets and monitoring their implementation, as well as a weakening of restrictions on the use of pesticides in sensitive areas.
For Green MEP Sarah Wiener, who led the work on the file, the rejection was a “bitter blow” for the protection of the environment and public health, calling out an “unholy alliance of the far-right, conservatives and liberals” which managed to “kill the entire position of the Parliament”.
However, she defended the decision to vote down the “amputated” final text, saying that the resulting text was “not one we could in good conscience vote for”.
Likewise, liberal MEP Pascal Canfin, chair of the Parliament’s environmental committee (ENVI), said the bar was “so low” on the end compromise that it would have “backtracked the [2009] sustainable use directive”.
With this vote, Parliament has effectively rejected the Commission proposal and closed its first reading. The Council still has to decide on its own position on the proposal to determine whether it is definitively rejected or returns to Parliament for a second reading.
