Brussels, 29th of May 2015
Dear Commissioner Andriukaitis,
As you know, the European Commission is legally bound to adopt criteria for the identification of endocrine disrupting chemicals by the end of 2013 pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 on plant protection products and Regulation (EU) No 528/2012 on biocidal products. Possible elements for such criteria were ready in February 2013. However, following massive pressure by industry from both sides of the Atlantic and certain scientists in June 2013, the Secretary General of the Commission unilaterally decided to launch an impact assessment of different options for those criteria in July 2013. The US side referred inter alia to the ongoing negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement to leverage their concerns. All of this has been documented in detail in a recent publication by the Corporate Europe Observatory (1) .
As a result, the Barroso Commission failed to meet the legal deadline. We are now in the middle of 2015, and no delivery date was announced in the roadmap established in June 2014.
On the 12th of May this year, you invited Members of the European Parliament to a roundtable at the European Commission in order to inform us on the latest developments regarding the regulatory framework, the roadmap and the impact assessment on the criteria to identify endocrine disruptors.
During this meeting, your services announced that the Joint Research Centre (JRC) was in charge of setting up a methodology for defining if a chemical falls under any of the options outlined in the roadmap. Based on this methodology, an external contractor will screen 700 chemical substances. The work is scheduled to be finished in the third quarter of 2016.
As a follow-up to the roundtable, I would like to ask you the following questions:
– When will the JRC publish the methodology?
– Who is the external contractor?
– What provisions do you foresee to guarantee the independence of this contractor and to protect this screening from lobby pressure?
– When will you publish the results of the screening?
– In the context of TTIP, does the Commission negotiate with the US about the provisions of the Pesticides Regulation, notably its Article 4 on the approval criteria for active substances, and/or about endocrine disrupters and the criteria for their identification?
Many thanks in advance for your precise answers.
Yours sincerely,
Michèle Rivasi, Vice-President of the Greens/EFA at the European Parliament.
(1) http://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/toxic_lobby_edc.pdf
Réponse de la Commission: https://www.michele-rivasi.eu/au-parlement/reponse-de-la-commission-europeenne-a-ma-lettre-du-29-mai-2015-sur-les-perturbateurs-endocriniens/
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