EU glyphosate approval interim extension stalled again

EU member states have again stalled the European Commission's proposal to extend the approval of the herbicide, glyphosate, by a year. An Appeal Committee in a meeting on November 15th did not reach the required majority to approve the extension. That follows a similar vote in October by the EU's Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF). Following that, the Commission referred the proposal to the Appeal Committee, which led to the vote yesterday.

The inability of member states to reach a qualified majority means that the Commission is free to go ahead with an extension. That should happen in the coming weeks.

Glyphosate is currently in the reapproval process. The active ingredient's existing approval runs until December 15th. But an extension was necessitated following the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) inability to finish its reassessment in time. In May, the EFSA stated that it required more time for its reassessment. Under the revised timetable, conclusions of the EFSA's peer review are expected to be made available to the Commission and member states by July 2023. That led to the Commission's proposal of a one-year extension through a draft Regulation.

The Glyphosate Renewal Group (GRG), which is the applicant for the ai's reapproval, says that it is confident that the current glyphosate approval will ultimately be extended, as proposed by the Commission, to allow sufficient time for the EFSA to conclude the ongoing scientific evaluation. Every other plant protection active substance that has needed this type of temporary administrative extension in the EU has been granted the extension, it points out.

Assessment delays

The EFSA's extension was necessitated owing to the "unprecedented number of comments" to the consultations carried out by it and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) on the draft assessments of glyphosate last year. The input received from the consultations, together with the replies received by the EFSA from the GRG in response to its request for additional information, added a significant amount of information to a dossier that already contained far more scientific data than are usually available for such assessments. The EFSA stated that the additional information would be considered by the Assessment Group on Glyphosate (AGG), composed of four EU member states - France, Hungary, Netherlands and Sweden - that is updating its initial draft renewal assessment report (dRAR).

Following the EFSA's extension to its assessment, the Risk Assessment Committee (RAC) of the ECHA concluded that glyphosate should not be classified as a carcinogen. Its assessment of hazard classifications for the ai concluded that the available scientific evidence did not meet the criteria to classify glyphosate for specific target organ toxicity, or as a carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic substance.

This article was published by S&P Global Commodity Insights and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.