Sugar beet growers in France and Belgium will no longer be able to obtain exemptions from the use of insecticides neonicotinoids, which help protect crops from aphids, the distributors of the beet jaundice virus, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled.
The environmental organization PAN Europe (Pesticide Action Network Europe) has initiated legal proceedings for the fact that France and Belgium constantly apply exceptions to their sugar beet growers due to controversial insecticides with neonicotinoids (imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam), which were banned.
On 19 January, the CJEU issued a preliminary ruling on the questions asked by the Belgian administrative court following a complaint by PAN Europe and the Belgian beekeeping firm Nature & Progrès Belgium.
The Court found that granting exemptions for the treatment of seeds with prohibited insecticides was not in line with EU law. Thus, this decision will affect all EU sugar beet growers who had hoped to obtain an emergency authorization for neonicotinoids by the new 2023 sowing season.
After significant crop losses due to diseases in 2020, France granted sugar beet growers a three-year exemption from the use of neonicotinoids. This exemption would have expired after this year’s harvest, but it will be lifted earlier by a court decision.
An EU court ruling has suspended France’s plans to allow sugar beet growers to use banned insecticides for another year. The CJEU has made it clear that Member States cannot propose exceptions for the treatment of seeds with neonicotinoids, which are considered a threat to bees. A few weeks before spring sowing, French farmers were stunned by the “brutality of the decision.”
There were hundreds of exceptions
PAN Europe recently published a report on exemptions granted by EU Member States for pesticides banned by the EU: over the past 4 years, as many as 236 derogations from the bans have been granted. Neonicotinoids accounted for almost half of them (47.5 percent).
Spain and Austria provided the largest number of such exemptions. Quite unexpectedly, the latter country is considered the leader in organic agriculture in the EU.
The PAN Europe report highlights that Member States are unable to assess the need for such exemptions and their compliance with EU law by prioritizing agribusiness over the protection of public health and the environment.
Neonicotinoid insecticides were approved in the EU in the nineties. After 20 years of discussions about their potential damage to the populations of insect pollinators (bees, etc.), in 2013 the European Commission and the Member States partially restricted their use. However, despite the ban, some EU Member States immediately, by way of exception, issued permits for their continued use.
In 2018, after the ban on all outdoor use of neonicotinoids, the number of exceptions even increased significantly, according to PAN Europe.
The British decided not to risk the beet harvest
Although an EU court has revoked authorizations for France and Belgium to use neonicotinoids, the United Kingdom has decided not to risk its national sugar harvest.
The UK’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has approved a temporary authorization for the use of neonicotinoid insecticides to protect this year’s sugar beet crop from aphids and, consequently, from the viral risk of jaundice spread by them.
“Sugar beet seedlings are vulnerable to aphids, which can spread the beet jaundice virus. It greatly affects the yield and quality of root crops.”
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