On Tuesday, EU health commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis confirmed that the European Commission has approved an 18-month extension to the licence for glyphosate, though the EU executive failed to gain the support of a qualified majority of member states in repeated votes on relicensing the controversial herbicide.

Glyphosate is the most commonly used herbicide in the world, but is currently at the centre of a regulatory spat between the World Health Organisation’s cancer research agency IARC and the EU’s health watchdog EFSA over whether or not it is a human carcinogen.

The 18 month license renewal was proposed by the Commission as a temporary measure, pending the publication of research findings which the Commission itself requested, after attempts to secure a 15 year renewal ended in deadlock. EU approval for glyphosate  was due to expire at the end of June, and the final say on the matter passed to the Commission after Member State representatives on an Appeals Committee failed to reach an agreement at an eleventh hour meeting on Thursday.

In the wake of last week’s Appeal Committee vote, environmentalists and Greens in the European Parliament had called on the Commission not to re-approve glyphosate. Green MEPs had been highly critical of the Commission’s reapproval proposals, accusing the EU executive of paying only lip service to the European Parliament’s demands to restrict glyphosate use to professionals only, ban pre-harvest spraying and prevent use in public parks.