Last week, the European Commission registered a European Citizens Initiative (ECI) calling for a ban on embattled herbicide glyphosate.The petition calls on the Commission "to propose to Member States a ban on glyphosate, to reform the pesticide approval procedure, and to set EU-wide mandatory reduction targets for pesticide use”.

In June, the Commission granted an 18 month extension to glyphosate’s EU license, after member states’ representatives on the Council failed to reach an agreement on the future of the bloc’s most widely used herbicide and the EU Parliament Parliament voted for strict restrictions to be placed on it. Though it remains widely used, glyphosate has been identified as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organisation (WHO) cancer research body IARC, which is considered a global benchmark in terms of transparency and impartiality. Campaigners in Europe have also expressed concerns about residues of the herbicide found in the mothers’ milk and urine of European citizens.

The ECI was introduced in 2012 as a means of allowing EU citizens to influence policy more directly. The glyphosate ECI will be formally registered on 25th January, when the organisers will begin a one-year process of collecting signatures. If it garners one million signatures from at least seven member states by next year, the Commission will have to respond, but it won’t have to honour the request made in the ECI.

On signing off on the Initiative, the Commission noted that its decision to register the ECI means only that it has been judged to be legally admissible by the College of Commissioners, not that it is supported.

Meanwhile, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is conducting a review on glyphosate for the Commission, which is due to be published later this year. Pro-transparency campaigners and Green MEPs are also pushing EU authorities to publish key scientific studies which were said to be key in influencing EU food safety watchdog EFSA’s 2015 opinion that glyphosate isn’t a human carcinogen, but weren’t used by IARC which - in the interests of transparency and replicability - only uses scientific papers in the public domain for its reviews.  

Four MEPs who submitted an appeal to EFSA last week said, “Citizens' trust in EU institutions is sorely lacking and continuing to hide information that impacts public health will not help address this.”