Current EU president France acknowledges that alternative crop protection products are entering the market far too slowly. French Minister Julien Denormandie (Agriculture) responded to this in an exchange with Dutch MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen (SGP).
The French Minister of Agriculture gave an extensive presentation on his EU plans for the coming six months in the AGRI agricultural committee of the European Parliament. Ruissen pointed out to the French minister the insufficient capacity in many EU countries to assess replacement products.
“I speak to many agricultural entrepreneurs who are at their wit's end because one crop protection product after another is no longer approved for agricultural use,” said Bert-Jan Ruissen. Furthermore, the EU is working with the Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy to further reduce the use of pesticides. By 2030, agriculture is only allowed to use half as many crop protection products.
This means plant diseases may cause crop failures more frequently. The SGP politician therefore believes that the phasing out of chemical products must go hand in hand with the approval of replacement products. “Are you willing to put faster approval on the agenda?” Ruissen asked Denormandie directly.
The French minister replied extensively that Ruissen is “one hundred percent right that the approval process is far too slow.” He attributed this partly to the multi-year scientific research of new products, but also to the approval procedure itself. “We see in some countries that approval sometimes takes longer than the preceding scientific research. That is a real problem. We really cannot speed up that research. But that approval takes three or four years: that is much too long.”
Julien Denormandie acknowledged that this problem currently receives too little attention in European politics. He said he would take this “interesting point” into account during his EU presidency.