EU pesticide approval periods could lengthen under Council negotiating position

The Council of the European Union has backed longer pesticide approval periods in its 30 September 2026 negotiating position on a food and feed safety package. Scientists and people who say they were harmed by pesticide exposure have raised concerns about less frequent reassessment, France 24 reported on 10 October. The change is not law: the European Parliament has yet to adopt its position before negotiations on a final text can begin.

How pesticide approval periods would change

Under the Council’s position, low-risk active substances and products containing them would receive approvals without an expiry date. Other substances and products would generally receive a 15-year first approval and 25-year subsequent approvals, subject to exceptions. Those periods describe the Council’s negotiating mandate, not rules already in force or a final agreement with Parliament.

The Council says the longer periods would be balanced by periodic reviews by the European Food Safety Authority, or EFSA, of scientific literature and available monitoring data. Its position also calls for more cautious treatment of substances classified in category 2 for carcinogenicity, mutagenicity or reproductive toxicity. The available account does not establish how often the scientific reviews would take place or precisely when new evidence would trigger regulatory action.

The European Commission proposed the wider food and feed safety simplification package in December 2025. It describes more targeted and efficient pesticide and biocide renewal procedures as one part of an effort to reduce administrative costs for producers and authorities while maintaining safety standards. The package also covers matters beyond pesticide approvals, including market access for biological control products and rules for pesticide residues in imports.

Why scientists and exposed workers are concerned

France 24 interviewed José Nadan, a 69-year-old former beekeeper and orchard worker in Brittany. He said he sprayed an orchard product without taking precautions because he had been told it was harmless. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer six years before the report, and France’s agricultural social security system recognised his illness as an occupational hazard caused by pesticides, according to France 24. His account shows why people who have worked with pesticides are watching the proposed rules closely; it does not establish the risks of every product covered by the package.

The Commission and the Council present the package as a way to ease administrative burdens while maintaining protections for health and the environment. Those are their stated aims. The package has not taken effect, and the available evidence does not show that these proposed changes have already altered pesticide exposure or health outcomes.

What an earlier pesticide renewal found

A previous EU renewal review shows how later evidence can change a regulatory decision. The Commission says EFSA experts examining chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos-methyl in 2019 identified human-health concerns, including possible damage to genetic material and developing nervous systems. EFSA concluded that safe exposure levels could not be determined from the available data, according to the Commission.

EU member states voted on 6 December 2019 not to renew approval of those two insecticides. The Commission formally adopted the measures on 10 January 2020, requiring member states to withdraw authorisations for products containing them within one month. It said countries could allow a limited grace period of no more than three months for storage, disposal and use. That decision concerned two named substances; it does not determine the risks of other pesticides.

What happens before the rules can take effect

The Council says negotiations with the European Parliament can begin after Parliament adopts its position. Its presidency had aimed for a provisional agreement by the end of 2026, but the sources do not establish a final parliamentary position, agreed text or implementation date. Lawmakers must still decide the length of approvals and the safeguards that would accompany them.

The Council’s mandate also addresses imported food. It retains a proposal to lower permitted residues to the lowest technically measurable level for particularly hazardous substances after an impact assessment, and extends the approach to certain substances posing unacceptable risks to honeybees or groundwater. That issue sits alongside the approval-period debate in the wider package; its final scope also depends on the legislative negotiations.