Centre right MEPs say they want to postpone the law proposal on pesticide reduction in its current form because it will jeopardise European food production during the war in Ukraine.

The debate on the new Sustainable Use of Pesticides (SUR) Regulation, marks the start of negotiations on the file in Parliament.

The EPP Group sounded the starting gun by saying it “firmly opposes” proposals of the Green Group in the European Parliament, which, it says, are “led by pure ideology as opposed to science.”

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The draft aims to further increase the Commission proposal to more than 50 per cent reduction in pesticides and more than 80 per cent for the more hazardous pesticides by 2030.

For ECR environment coordinator and shadow rapporteur Alexandr Vondra, this goes too far. Vondra said, “With high prices and multiple crises in Europe and around the world, now is not the time to make agricultural production more difficult.

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Vondra added:

We all want to have more space and potential for biodiversity. But, if we want to have areas with more biodiversity and less chemicals on them, then of course that will mean dramatically lower yields for farmers, lower food quality for consumers, and that will have to be compensated for elsewhere.

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