The environmental, consumer, farmer and public health groups signed below welcome the initiative of the Commission in general, but believe that the Commission’s approach falls short of the legislative action needed to effectively address the pressing problems of increasing pesticides use.
We demand a strategy that ends the current irresponsible failure to protect human health and the environment. Such a strategy should include:
- A European legislation to reduce pesticides application frequency by 25% in 5 years and by 50% in 10 years.
- A ban on pesticides, which are accumulating in the environment or human bodies or which are carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic or endocrine disrupting or of similar level of concern.
We believe that both measures are necessary to achieve risk reduction, which duly considers the pesticides’ threats to human and in particular to children’s health, and to biodiversity and to stop further contamination of groundwater, Europe's primary source of drinking water These measures would lead the way for a “sustainable pesticides use”, by:
- Reducing pesticides dependency, abolishing perverse subsidies and establishing incentives for alternative pest control and farming methods, following European targets and deadlines.
- Immediately taking highly risky pesticides off the market and showing the direction for future product and process innovations.
These would allow consumers to regain trust in pest management, improve the quality of our foodstuff and environment, and reduce high drinking water treatment costs.
In order to address the shortcomings of the Commission’s Communication, PAN Europe and the EEB proposed in May 2002 a detailed pesticides use strategy in the form of a text for a Directive on Pesticides Use Reduction in Europe (the PURE Directive), supported by a broad range of environmental, public health, consumer and farmer groups throughout Europe.
The PURE Directive is not only supported by a broad range of societal groups, but also the European Parliament requested in May 2002 that the Commission should propose a Directive to establish a programme for a reduction in the use of pesticides, before July 2003.
In detail we therefore urge for a European Pesticides Strategy to include:
- Mandatory reduction plans for all Member States with targets and timetables for use reduction and increased percentage of land in organic farming, including, for each Member State, a target for use reduction measured according to the treatment frequency index1 and a target for increased land in organic farming, within 10 years from a baseline year;
- Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Integrated Crop Management (ICM) (whose standards have to be accurately defined by each Member State) as a minimum for all EU non-agriculture and agriculture pesticide uses. Cross-compliance with ICM should be a condition for CAP subsidies. ICM systems are highly likely to reduce incidence of pesticide leaching and impacts of pesticides in soils and to have a positive impact on the biodiversity of non-cropped species including macrofauna. If ICM results in slightly reduced yields, the reduced costs can however lead to higher profitability.
- CAP should ensure that small and medium sized farmers reducing their use of pesticides do not face a reduction in income. CAP should also provide more support for agrienvironmental measures, especially for organic farming.
- Full access to information on pesticides held by authorities, including information supporting specific regulatory decisions in due time to allow for response from the general public.
- The revision of Directive 91/414/EC must ensure that pesticide active ingredients, including persistent, bioacccumulative, CMRs (carcinogenic or mutagenic or toxic for reproduction) or EDs (endocrine disruptors) are excluded from marketing and use.
- Pesticides classified as priority hazardous substances under the Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC should be excluded as well.