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EFSA has completed its assessments of emergency authorisations granted by 11 EU Member States for the use of neonicotinoid-based insecticides on sugar beet in 2020 and 2021.
The assessments cover 17 emergency authorisations for plant protection products containing clothianidin, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and thiacloprid granted by Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.
Outdoor use of imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and clothianidin in the EU was banned in 2018 and, in January 2020, the approval of thiacloprid was not renewed. The measures followed assessments by EFSA, which showed that the first three substances posed risks to bee health and use of thiacloprid could lead to contamination of groundwater.
In 2020 the European Commission asked EFSA to assess whether the emergency authorisations granted by the Member States were justified because there was a danger to crops “which cannot be contained by any other reasonable means”, in line with the EU Plant Protection Products Regulation.
EFSA has concluded that in all 17 cases the emergency authorisations were justified, either because no alternative products or methods – chemical or non-chemical – were available or because there was a risk that the pest could become resistant to available alternative products.
