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Legal challenge pending on EU approval of paraquat
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A coalition composed of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Associations (IUF) the IUFs European regional organisation EFFAT-IUF, the European environmental bureau (EEB), Pesticides Action Network (PAN) Europe, the Dutch Society for Nature and Environment and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), has filed a lawsuit with the European Court of First Instance challenging the European Commission's decision last December to grant EU wide approval for the deadly herbicide paraquat. The legal challenge contends that the Commission decision ignored readily available scientific evidence of the toxic effects of paraquat on humans and the environment and that the approval violates the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, The European Union treaty and secondary EU law.
There have been large campaigns for many years by environmental groups and others to ban the use of paraquat which is responsible for a substantial number of annual pesticide related deaths. The effects of paraquat are irreversible once absorbed through the skin or lungs or orally ingested. There is no known antidote to paraquat poisoning. A potentially fatal link has been documented between paraquat exposure and Parkinson's disease. Agricultural workers are regularly exposed to this toxic substance during handling and mixing spraying and working in freshly sprayed fields. This herbicide is persistent and accumulates in the soil with repeated applications.
The legal challenge argues that all of this information was ignored by the Commission whose decision to authorise paraquat came in response to a huge lobbying effort by the manufacturer Syngenta and the wider pesticides lobby in the main EU member states. The decision was also opposed by EU member states Austria, Denmark, Finland and Sweden where paraquat had previously been banned.
The government of Sweden has launched an independent challenge to the approval decision in the European Court of Justice.READ MORE HERE |
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