By adopting the 2009 "pesticide package," the EU proposed a common approach to limiting the harmful effects of pesticides, promoting Integrated Pest Management, and the progressive replacement of the most dangerous pesticides with low-risk alternatives through a comprehensive but flexible framework for all EU Member States. Each EU Member State had to develop a National Action Plan that would propose measures to achieve the package’s goals. Nevertheless, the choice of actions and indicators remained to be established at the national level. A series of recent evaluations of how Directive 2009/128/EC of the European Parliament and the Council on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive (SUD), a central piece of the "pesticide package," was implemented showed limited success in achieving its goals. Aiming to explain these failures, we compare the National Action Plans eight EU Member States adopted after the SUD. We assess the degree to which the countries’ proposed measures and indicators would achieve the Directive’s three overarching objectives (reduce risks and impact; promote Integrated Pest Management; promote approaches and techniques to reduce reliance on pesticides). We develop the comparative analysis along three dimensions: the promotion of measures to achieve SUD’s three goals; the evolution of the pre-and post-Directive action plans of some of the old EU Member States; and the differences between old and the new EU Member States. The comparison along ten variables shows that the SUD had a minimal effect in homogenizing different states’ approaches to develop their National Action Plans to systematically treat problems, propose measures, and timetables for implementation and indicators. Given that the overall effect in generating a common EU approach to raise the sustainability of pesticide use and agriculture, in general, was still limited, as no common measures, indicators, or process to planning were identified, we discuss some suggestions to improve the situation.
Developing sustainable agriculture by identifying non-chemical alternative Plant Protection Products (PPP) is a cornerstone in achieving long-sought environmental friendliness. Despite significant legislative and political efforts to promote biocontrol solutions and Integrated Pest Management (IPM), the literature points out the disadvantages posed by European Union’s (EU) two-tier system for Microbial Biological Control Agents (MBCA) approval and subsequent Microbial Biological Control Products (MBCP) authorization by each EU Member State (MS). Despite the disadvantages, in a recent article, we showed that the EU had outcompeted the US and other countries in approved MBCA in the last decades; however, MBCP approval at the national level lags. Achieving the EU Green Deal’s aim set out in the ‘Farm to Fork Strategy’ to reduce the use and risk of pesticides by 50% by 2030 is difficult without developing viable alternatives. Why do we not have higher MBCP availability and usage in the EU? Is it the current legislation, its poor application, or some other factors? The current legislative framework stimulated MBCA approval. Thus, we compare MBCA approval and MBCP authorization procedure to evaluate if MBCP authorization is more difficult and thus causes a bottleneck. We find that requirements for MBCP authorization are unnecessarily more complex. We recommend simplifying the MBCP dossier requirements and making them as similar to MBCA as possible to accelerate the MBCP authorization in more EU MS to increase their availability and integration in agronomic crops’ pest management plans.
While using microbial biological control products (MBCPs) to limit pathogens is one of the alternatives to the ecologically unsustainable use of synthetic pesticides that received attention, the last 2 decades have not brought the foreseen leap in developing systematic alternatives based on low-risk plant protection products (PPPs) across the globe. To explain this limited progress, we map the evolution of research on the most successful microbial biological control agents (MBCAs) worldwide. We also map the financing structure in the top funding countries and the European Union (EU) to discern the relevant trends. Available data for the European Union Member States allowed us to discover a country-level and EU-level correlation between strain-level research and biocontrol products’ approval based on those strains.
The 2009 “pesticide package” changed the European Union’s approach to increasing its resilience to synthetic pesticides’ detrimental effects and health risks. It promoted the common goals of reducing volumes, reducing treatment frequency, improving efficacy, reducing risks of pesticide usage, reducing impact, reducing pesticide use in specific areas, and increasing public knowledge and awareness of plant protection products (PPP) usage and effects. Part of the “pesticide package,” Directive 2009/128/EC demanded that each EU MS crystalize by 2012 their approach to these goals in National Action Plans (NAPs) designed to systematically assess the situation and propose objectives and measures to achieve the Directive’s aims. This article presents a dynamic analysis of the changes that took place between the first (by 2012) and second (by 2019) generation of NAPs and evaluates in measures and a timetable the observed progress in achieving the first goal of Directive 2009/128/EC We assess how the EU MS approach to minimizing risks to public health has changed in this intrinsically environmental policy. We show that improvements-proposing measures designed to achieve the Directive’s first goal in all EU MS can be observed, but increasing coherence in measures, timetables, and indicators is needed to accomplish the SUD and EU Green Deal goals.
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