The European Union is getting ready to strip away essential safeguards we currently have in place to protect us, our health, and nature from the toxic impacts of pesticides. How? With that the European Commission calls an Omnibus legislative package. A dry designation for a very dangerous proposal that actually affects us all.
If the European Parliament votes for this Pesticide Omnibus passed, it will be one of the worst regulatory setbacks ever seen.This move stands in stark contrast to the urgent and repeated warnings from scientists and doctors regarding the irreversible damage pesticides cause to biodiversity, as well as their role in the rise of numerous illnesses, including cancers and neurodegenerative diseases.
What’s in the works?
The European Commission is planning no less than lifetime approval for pesticides. That means no more mandatory regular re-evaluations! Many pesticides would no longer need to be reassessed every 10 to 15 years. Under the current framework, each renewal requires a review of new scientific studies and a reassessment of the health and environmental effects of authorised pesticides. It is the manufacturers who must regularly demonstrate that their substance remains compliant. If the Omnibus passes, the logic would be reversed: it would be up to the authorities to demonstrate that a substance no longer complies, according to a schedule that lacks regularity and without a clearly defined process.
The new rules would also limit EU member states’ ability to act on new evidence. Even when studies reveal serious health or environmental risks, national authorities could not take action without first requesting a Commission-led reassessment. This would effectively prevent member countries from incorporating new peer-reviewed studies or other evidence. Under such a system, Denmark, for example, would not have been able to ban PFAS pesticides, as it did recently.
As if it weren’t enough, the Commission allows for the doubling the period during which highly toxic pesticides can still be sold after being banned to protect our health or the environment. Instead of 1.5 years, citizens could be exposed to these chemicals for up to 3 years.
Other concerning parts of the proposal include broader exemptions that could make it easier to approve pesticides, a problematic definition of biocontrol products that extends beyond natural substances, and allowing more extensive use of drones to spray chemicals.
These changes are a big attack on Europe’s chemical safeguards at a time when science, public concern, and the health and biodiversity crises call for stronger, not weaker, protections.
What does it mean for our food and the environment?
Regular re-evaluations of pesticides are the only times when chemical companies are required to fully update safety information, take new scientific evidence into account, and prove that their products still comply with EU standards.
If these reviews were removed, it would have wide-ranging and serious consequences:
Dangerous pesticides left unchecked
Many pesticides may seem safe during initial testing, but later turn out to harm people and the Many pesticides may seem safe during initial testing, but later turn out to harm people and the environment. The EU’s system for re-evaluating pesticides has repeatedly uncovered serious harms years after a pesticide was first approved. Without these reviews, dangerous chemicals could stay on the market indefinitely.
For example:
- Chlorpyrifos. It has been used for decades without anyone recognizing its harmful effects on children’s brain development. Only after new research emerged did the EU finally ban it in 2020.
- Mancozeb. It stayed legal for more than 50 years, as early evaluations missed its risks to hormones, reproduction, and the nervous system. These dangers were confirmed through later scientific studies, leading to a ban in 2021.
- Flufenacet. Allowed for over 20 years, new safety data revealed it disrupts hormones in humans and wildlife and breaks down into a persistent chemical called TFA (trifluoroacetic acid), which now shows up in tap water across Europe. This led to a ban in 2024.
These examples show why regular pesticide re-evaluations are essential: they are the only way to catch long-term harms that weren’t known when a product was first approved.
Take Glyphosate for example, linked to potential cancer risks and widely criticized by independent scientists and public health advocates. Or Acetamiprid, the last widely approved neonicotinoid in the EU linked to developmental brain harm. Under the new rules proposed by the Commission, these pesticides (and many others) could remain on the market indefinitely, even as new evidence continues to raise serious concerns. According to an analysis by the French NGO Générations Futures, 49 synthetic substances would receive unlimited approval if the Commission’s proposal was to enter into force.
A race to the bottom
If older pesticides are no longer required to undergo mandatory re-evaluation, keeping them on the market becomes cheaper than developing safer alternatives. Rather than promoting safer innovations or encouraging farmers to work with nature to manage pests, weeds, and plant diseases, the proposal risks trapping them in continued reliance on harmful chemical products.
Pesticide industry’s wishlist, check!
The measures proposed in the Pesticide Omnibus clearly reflect long-standing demands from pesticide corporations.
Bayer, one of Europe’s largest pesticide producers, openly called for ending mandatory full-dossier reviews when pesticides are renewed. The company suggested that approvals should become “unlimited with periodic literature reviews or safety updates where needed,” arguing this would “free regulatory capacity for novel product assessments and reduce unnecessary administrative burden.” The Commission is using the exact same reasoning to justify the Omnibus reforms. Similarly, CropLife Europe, which represents major pesticide companies, called for replacing resource-intensive re-submissions with a system that only reviews genuinely new information.
Many other industry requests, such as easier approval of drone spraying, broader exemptions for pesticide use, and longer grace periods for banned products, are also included in the Omnibus. This shows how closely the proposal mirrors the pesticide industry’s agenda, prioritising their wishes over public health, biodiversity, and safety.
In the European Parliament, Herbert Dorfmann (EPP) and Michele Picaro (Fratelli, ECR) are co-rapporteurs on this Omnibus. Their proposed amendments would make it even worse, causing more damage to public health. To draft their report, they exclusively used input from the pesticide industry and agribusiness lobbies, including Bayer, BASF, and Corteva; pesticide producers’ lobby groups CropLife, ECCA (European Crop Care Association), and Euroseeds; big farming lobby Copa-Cogeca; and various Italian lobby groups such as ConfAgricoltura, representing large agricultural producers in Italy.
Corporate Europe Observatory’s new investigation reveals how the industry didn’t just lobby on the Pesticide Omnibus, they effectively drafted parts of it.
Who pays the price of this deliberate destruction of protections?
The Commission’s political case rests on a headline figure of over €1 billion in annual savings. These estimates rely on outdated studies – some dating back to 2007 – and overly optimistic assumptions. Crucially, the Commission does not attempt to balance these claimed savings against potential healthcare costs and environmental damage.
Evidence shows that the societal costs of pesticide use far outweigh the industry’s economic benefits. A study by le BASIC estimated that, in Europe alone, the costs directly attributable to pesticides and borne by society reached €2.3 billion in 2017, more than twice the €0.9 billion in net profits generated by the pesticide industry that same year. At the global level, a recent report by Systemiq estimates that pesticides and other toxic chemicals cause US $3 trillion in preventable health and environmental costs every year, including US $1.4–2.2 trillion in healthcare expenditure and US $640 billion in ecological damage.
By making indefinite approval the default, the Pesticide Omnibus proposal shifts responsibility for pesticide safety away from companies and onto the public. Today, companies must regularly prove that their pesticides are still safe by submitting updated scientific data. If they fail to do so, approval can be withdrawn. Under the proposed changes, this responsibility would shift to public authorities, who would have to prove that a pesticide is dangerous before acting. This puts the cost and burden of monitoring on taxpayers, delays action until harm has already occurred, and allows companies to keep selling their products and making profits, while the risks are borne by people and the environment.
How would scaling back pesticide protections affect the health of farmers and nearby communities?
Farmers and farm workers are often the first victims of pesticide use, with many developing cancers, neurological diseases like Parkinson’s, and other serious illnesses linked to chemical exposure. Even when they use protective equipment, studies show they remain at risk.
It’s not only farmers who are affected: families and neighbours are exposed to drifting chemicals, making pesticide use a wider community health issue.
In its latest report published in 2021, France’s public health institute established a link between pesticide exposure–particularly during pregnancy and early childhood–and a higher risk of childhood cancer. Clusters of pediatric cancers in rural French communities, such as in Saint-Rogatien in Charente-Maritime or Sainte-Pazanne in Loire-Atlantique, have been linked by families and local associations to intensive agricultural pesticide use.
While the dangers of pesticides remain a taboo, those at the frontline of pesticide exposure, including farmers themselves, are increasingly speaking out. Every year that toxic pesticides remain on the market unchecked is another year in which farmers, farm workers, their families, and communities are exposed to preventable health risks.
Can we still trust that our food and drinking water is safe?
We are all exposed to pesticide mixtures through the food we eat and the water we drink. While individual residues may remain below their respective legal limits, growing evidence points to health effects of chronic exposure to multiple pesticides, particularly during pregnancy and early life, and in relation to reproductive, neurological, endocrine and metabolic health.
They are in our food. The 2026 European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) report revealed that 41.6% of fruit and vegetables sold in the EU contain pesticide residues, with 25.5% containing more than one residue.
They are in our bodies. In 2022, a large-scale human biomonitoring survey showed that 84% of citizen’s urine samples contained at least 2 pesticide residues.
They are in our water. Surveys show that 22% of rivers and lakes have levels above safety thresholds, and studies in countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, and Ireland found pesticides in drinking water exceeding safety limits. While this clearly calls for stronger safeguards to protect our water and environment, the Commission is instead proposing to weaken existing protections
Scientists are raising the alarm
Since the European Commission presented its proposal, scientists and public health experts have repeatedly raised their concerns.
An independent assessment commissioned by the Dutch Parliament questioned whether the proposal would actually simplify pesticide authorisations or reduce administrative burdens, while warning that it could weaken protections and shift the burden of proof away from pesticide producers.
A scientific analysis published in Science in June 2026 similarly warned that the proposal could increase risks to health and the environment and reduce incentives for safer alternatives. Other scientific institutions and researchers, including Germany’s National Academy of Sciences have also called for caution.
Leading endocrine health organisations, the European Society of Endocrinology, the Endocrine Society and the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology, have separately urged Members of the European Parliament to reject provisions that would weaken protections against these chemicals.
And in September, more than 500 scientists, practitioners and public health and environmental officials called for the political process to pause until an independent assessment of the proposal’s health, environmental and administrative impacts is carried out.
Let’s mobilise against the Pesticide Omnibus
If EU decision-makers pass this proposal, they will betray the more than 1.1 million citizens across Europe who called on the EU to end pesticide use.
Victims of pesticides, farmers’ organisations, environmental and environmental health groups, medical organisations, patient and consumer associations, collectives of doctors and scientists, and mutual health organisations all call for mobilisation against this toxic Omnibus. We need a food and farming system that is able to feed us while protecting workers, people, nature.
The European Parliament is getting ready to vote. We have a few weeks to make sure MEPs choose our health over the industry’s profits. Help us put pressure on them with a few simple clicks.
