The European Parliament has given the 27 Agriculture and Fisheries ministers and the European Commission a 'pre-warning' that it insists on a ban on glyphosate in crop protection products. MEPs do not want its use to be readmitted from 2023 onward, as several EU countries advocate.
Later this month, the publication is expected of a four-country study on the use of chemical pesticides, an evaluation study to which France, Sweden, Hungary, and the Netherlands also contributed. There are concerns about a repeat of back-and-forth debates between supporters and opponents, or further delays and postponements.
In a broadly supported resolution on biodiversity protection (515 votes in favor, 90 against, 86 abstentions), the European Parliament once again urges that the EU initiative on "pollinators" be urgently revised. The aim of this should be to counter the decline in pollinators (bee mortality).
The MEPs also emphasize that farmers need environmentally friendly crop protection products to be able to reduce the use of pesticides. To strengthen this ambition, the MEPs advocate for a European biodiversity law, similar to the European Climate Law.
In addition, they call for a kind of "Paris Agreement" for biodiversity at the UN conference in October this year. During that conference, global priorities for biodiversity will be established for 2030 and beyond.
The MEPs regret that the EU did not meet its 2020 biodiversity targets. Although the EU already has the largest network of protected areas in the world, EU politicians repeat their earlier call to designate at least 30% of European land and sea areas as protected zones by 2030 at the latest.