Statistics on pesticides

The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety adopted the report drawn up by Bart STAES (Greens/EFA, BE) modifying, under the second reading of the codecision procedure, the Council's common position for adopting a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning statistics on plant protection products.

The main amendments are as follows:

Plant protection products: this will be replaced by the term pesticides. The Regulation establishes a common framework for the systematic production of Community statistics on the placing on the market and use of pesticides which are plant protection products, as defined in the text. The definition now includes a biocidal product as defined in Directive 98/8/EC.

Biocides: a new recital notes that it is anticipated that, taking into account the results of the evaluation of Directive 98/8/EC and on the basis of an impact assessment, the scope of this Regulation will be extended to cover biocidal products.

Frequency: Member States shall collect the data necessary for the specification of the characteristics listed in Annex I on an annual basis and for the specification of the characteristics listed in Annex II in 5-year periods. The committee also made some amendments to the methods for collecting data.

Comitology:the Commission may modify requirements relating to the provision of quality reports described in Section 6 of Annexes I and II in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny. It shall adapt the list of substances to be covered and their classification in categories of products and chemical classes as set out in Annex III on a regular basis and at least every 5 years.

Report: the Commission’s report must evaluate the data collection methods

Publication of data: data shall be transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat) within 12 months of the end of each five-year period and published, in particular on the Internet, in accordance with the requirements regarding the protection of statistical confidentiality as laid down in Regulation (EC) No 223/2009, with a view to ensure information of the public.

Lastly, Member States’ quality reports must include a summary description of the commercial non-agricultural uses of pesticides obtained in the framework of pilot studies to be led by the Commission (Eurostat).