Dhe frustration of EU officials was palpable when the European Commission unveiled its proposals to reduce pesticide use on Wednesday. The Commission actually wanted to present this in March. After the outbreak of the Ukraine war, however, the proposal initially slipped down the Commission’s list of priorities – also because some states and stakeholders argued that instead of making life difficult for farmers, the EU should take care of securing the food supply inside and outside of Europe . “Unfortunately, the bees have not yet noticed that there is a war in Ukraine,” commented a high-ranking EU official venomously.
If the EU does not act now, entire ecosystems could collapse. “We are currently experiencing a mass extinction in which a million species are threatened with extinction,” says EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius. 80 percent of European ecosystems are in poor condition. Above all, this affects pollinators that are important for agriculture, such as bees. 75 percent of all food plants need to be pollinated. Since the late 1990s, the number of insects has fallen by 80 percent. As a bold warning, the Commission sees the pictures of Chinese pollinating flowers by hand because the number of insects has fallen so much.
The damage to food safety would then be much more serious than the consequences of reducing the use of pesticides, the Commission stresses. Especially since production can be maintained for the most part through the use of computer-controlled precision agriculture and alternative pesticides. Soil erosion caused by deforestation and intensive agriculture already costs farmers 1.2 billion euros a year because they could produce less, says Sinkevičius. 3 million tons of wheat could have been grown on the lost land.
Ban on pesticides on all public green spaces
The European Commission therefore wants to halve the use of all pesticides in the EU by 2030. There should also be a separate savings target of 50 percent for particularly dangerous pesticides. Irrespective of this, the use of pesticides should be prohibited on all publicly accessible green spaces and a certain safety distance should be maintained.
The Commission has certainly made concessions in this respect. How the states reduce the use of pesticides is largely up to them. But that’s not all: The 50 percent target itself is not binding for the states. You can deviate from it, i.e. go below it, if you justify it. The prerequisite is, for example, that they have already done a lot in recent years to reduce the use of pesticides. This also applies if the farmers use comparatively few chemical pesticides per hectare anyway. The European Commission nevertheless assumes that the EU as a whole will achieve the 50 percent target. Some EU countries would certainly go beyond 50 percent, it says there. The Commission will also exert maximum pressure in the talks on national plans to reduce the use of pesticides. Since the plans are public, civil society can also have an influence.
Irrespective of the reduction in chemical pesticides, the EU states should ensure that the number of pollinating insects will at least not decrease by 2030. In addition, the Commission wants to oblige the EU countries to restore 20 percent of the ecosystems by 2030. They should also present national plans for this, which will be examined by the Commission. The renaturation of swamp areas plays a major role. In this way, the EU alone can cover a quarter of the CO caused by agriculture2-Reduce emissions. States should restore at least 30 percent of swamps used for agriculture by 2030. A quarter of it is to be irrigated again. By 2050, 70 percent of the swamps should be renatured.
Both proposals can only come into force if the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers agree to them. Criticism has already come from the European Parliament. The need of the hour is an increase in agricultural production in the EU, said the chairman of the agricultural committee, Norbert Lins (CDU). “Unfortunately, the proposals point in the opposite direction.”
