Statistics on pesticides

The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety adopted the report by Bart STAES (Greens/ALE, BE) amending, under the 1st reading of the codecision procedure, the proposal for a regulation concerning statistics on plant protection products.

The main amendments adopted in committee are as follows :

- Members wish to specify that the Regulation establishes a framework for the production of Community statistics on the production, placing on the market and use of pesticides. Statistics should cover production, placing on the market and use, and should also cover the annual amounts of biocidal products placed on the market according to Annex I, Annex IA and Annex IB of Directive 98/8/EC. The scope should be expanded to include biocidal products, by the time the first report is submitted by the Commission;

- a new clause states that the statistics shall, in particular, serve the following purposes: a) implementation and evaluation of the Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides; b) development of harmonised national and Community risk indicators, identification of trends in the use of plant protection products and assessment of the effectiveness of national action plans; c) recording of substance flows at the stages of production of, trade in, and use of plant protection products;

- the term ‘plant protection product’ is replaced by 'pesticides'. The latter is defined as (i) plant protection products as defined in Article 2(1) of Directive 91/414/EEC as amended; (ii) biocidal products as defined in Directive 98/8/EC belonging to product types 14–19 as defined in Annex V thereto;

- data will be collected from pesticide producers, traders and importers;

- in order to guarantee compatibility and comparability of the data on a Community level, the Commission should have the power to authorise the data collection method chosen by the Member State authority;

- Member States shall ensure that producers of plant protection products and those responsible for placing plant protection products on the market or importing them report annually to the competent authority on: (a) the quantities in which a given active substance or a given plant protection product is produced; (b) the quantities in which a given active substance or a given plant protection product is supplied to processing firms or wholesalers in the EU; (c) the quantities in which a given active substance or a given plant protection product is exported. This information shall be assessed by the competent authorities and, where appropriate after editing to preserve the confidentiality of certain information published;

- Member States shall ensure that the data collected are evaluated by a suitably qualified group of experts and assessed with regard to impact on human health and the environment. This evaluation shall be published on the Internet;

- in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 322/97, confidential data shall be used by national authorities and by the Community authority exclusively for the purposes of the Regulation;

- the Annex of active substances must be updated whenever a new active substance is included in Annex I of the authorisation procedure;

- lastly, the Commission’s report shall evaluate in particular the quality and comparability of data transmitted, the burden on agricultural holdings, horticultural holdings and other businesses and the usefulness of these statistics in the context of the Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides.