EU Court of Justice rejects Bayer attempt to overturn bee-killing pesticide ban - Buglife
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled today that the European Commission was right to ban the use of three bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides – imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam. The Court rejected Bayer’s appeal to overturn the ban and the 17 May 2018 ruling of the EU General Court, and instead significantly strengthened the ability of the EC to take action to prevent environmental harm.
In 2013 the EC decided to ban three neonicotinoids from various uses where they believed there was a risk to bees and pollinators. Since then further evidence of harm being caused, for instance 40% of wild bees in one UK study had been extinguished in more than 10% of their range by neonicotinoid use and widespread contamination of wildflowers near arable fields, resulted in a full outdoor ban on the three pesticides across Europe.
Bayer had argued that the EC could only act to protect the environment if previously agreed criteria were no longer met and could not act to ban uses of pesticides where there was no specific evidence that linked environmental harm to that use (e.g. domestic use). This would have undermined the EU’s ‘precautionary principle’ and the ability of the EC to take action that would prevent environmental harm. Instead the Court determined that the EC could base it’s decisions on an assessment of environmental risk based on any new scientific evidence and could rely on the precautionary principle to take a wide spread of measures that it decided would reduce the likely occurrence of environmental harm.
Buglife presented arguments to the court in defence of the ban, along with Pesticides Action Network Europe, Beelife and Greenpeace. The Court ruled that Bayer should pay legal costs incurred by environmental groups.
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Posted On: 06/05/2021