EU to adapt pesticide rules to accelerate sustainable solutions – Euractiv
Member States have until next week to submit their views to the European Commission on a proposal for a common definition of biological control products, which stakeholders say could help speed up the approval process.
The Commission is asking EU countries to comment on the inclusion of a definition of biological control – natural solutions for pest control – in the Regulation for the evaluation and authorisation of plant protection products.
Examples of biological pest control include biopesticides and alternative methods such as the release a natural predator to control the population size of another species.
However, there is no uniform definition of biological pesticide in the EU – a factor that slows down the approval process for solutions that are gaining global acceptance as sustainable alternatives to chemical pesticides.
In the US, Brazil and Canada, new bio-based products will be approved within one to three years of application, according to an industry presentation at the informal meeting of agriculture ministers on April 8 in Sint Truiden, Belgium.
In the EU, current regulations require such products to undergo the same lengthy approval process, which takes six to ten years, as chemical pesticides.
At a meeting in July, the Commission gave member states until next Friday (6 September) to give their opinion on a proposed new text defining biological control.
The move was welcomed by industry representatives who had long been waiting for a definition that would give European farmers faster access to biological pest control solutions.
“There is a lot of support (in the EU) for biological control. We just need to find a legal means to get it into farmers’ hands faster,” Jennifer Lewis, executive director of the International Biocontrol Manufacturers Association (IBMA), told Euractiv.
In June, at a meet Speaking at the EU’s Single Market Enforcement Taskforce – a forum where the Commission and EU countries work together to remove barriers in the bloc’s market – stakeholders outlined the challenges they face in authorising biological control products.
Producers complained about a burdensome approval process for organic solutions, which they say hinders the transition to more sustainable farming. Commission officials promised to take further steps to facilitate their introduction.
A definition that died with the SUR
However, this is not the first time that an EU-wide definition of biological plant protection has been debated.
The most recent attempt at a legal definition was found in the proposal for a regulation on the sustainable use of pesticides (SUR), a controversial text. rejected by the European Parliament last year and withdrawn by the European Commission in February.
The proposal, which aims to halve pesticide use by 2030, describes biological control agents as “natural agents of biological origin or substances identical to them”.
Since the SUR did not become law, the definition did not come about either. However, Lewis is optimistic about the approach of the current discussions.
“The context for supporting biological control could be very different if there was no discussion about reducing pesticides, because that would be very frightening for member states,” she said.
In the meantime, “an increase in biological pest control is not scary,” she added.
(Edited by Angelo Di Mambro and Daniel Eck)
