Halving the use and risk of pesticides by 2030 is one of the key measures under the European Green Deal to halt biodiversity loss and promote healthy ecosystems. But currently, no meaningful data are available to show which pesticides are used where, when, and in what quantities for food production and other purposes.
The European Commission responded to this shortcoming in February 2021 with a legislative proposal: the Regulation on Statistics on Agricultural Input and Output (the SAIO Proposal). This proposal would require Member States to submit annual statistics on pesticide use to the Commission (Eurostat). These data are to be based on farmers' existing records of their pesticide use. These records have been mandatory for all farms since 2011. If the SAIO Proposal becomes law, they will have to be registered and sent in electronic form.
While the European Parliament's Agriculture Committee preserved and improved the key elements of the SAIO Proposal relating to pesticide data, Member States in the Council's closed sessions diluted the proposal in many far-reaching ways. Thus, we invoked the right of access to European Union documents to get information about what has happened there. In this report we use those documents to show how the Council – and in particular a group of ten Member States – watered down the SAIO Proposal in a way that makes the 50% pesticide-reduction target impossible to measure and therefore pointless.
The biodiversity and climate crisis calls for targeted implementation and monitoring of European climate, environmental and human health protection policies based on robust data. Ensuring that we finally know what pesticides are being used, where, when and in what quantities is essential to this. Without ensuring this data is available in 2030, the 50% reduction target of the Farm to Fork Strategy amounts to taking aim with a blindfold on.
In view of the start of the trilogue on February 3, 2022, we ask the Parliament, Council and Commission to take into account the importance of accurate and comparable annual data on pesticide use and to work constructively to achieve an effective SAIO Regulation which is fully integrated into other EU policies.