Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur on Sustainable use of pesticides holds a press conference. This transcription is a result of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

Strasbourg

plenary session

press conference

use of pesticides and herbicides (T)

use of glyphosate (T)

WIENER, Sarah (Greens/EFA, AT)

Press conference by Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur on Sustainable use of pesticides

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, So sustainable use of pesticide regulation (SUR) has been voted on. The aim was to have a legal text to reduce the use of pesticides. I couldn't have imagined that the whole draft would end up being trampled into the ground. This is a bitter disappointment as rapporteur, but it's an even bigger disappointment for the environment, for our biodiversity goals, for our health and for the health of our children and our children's children. There was a reason why we wanted this regulation. There were more than 7000 scientists who said that we needed to cut pesticide use.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, They all had 300 environmental contaminants in their breastmilk, in their spit, in their uterus, elsewhere in their body. There's also a great loss of insects. Our soil has also contamination of our underground water and our surface water. You know, the water industry is not exactly environmentally friendly, and I've been labelled as environmentally mad by some on the right.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, So look at what's happening today. The right has worked hand in hand with the extreme right, and they are celebrating a victory. Yes, this is a victory for them. But I wonder whether this victory is truly a victory for humanity and our world. I really do have my doubts. We as the Greens, tried to align our compromises with other groups so that we could reach an agreement.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, I, as rapporteur, was always working well with the specific ENVI committee, the responsible committee. We had a strong majority there. There has been such strong lobbying by the agri groups and by other groups. So they have bought off votes. They have flipped votes. We have to say that quite clearly.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, The pesticide industry said to me that they wrote the EPP amendments, and it's no surprise. There's a real strong hierarchy in the EPP and that prevents sustainability and a forward looking approach and affects their voting patterns. So you have to look at which group you support and then you end up trapped and then you end up voting against your own interests. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, when we saw the votes, there were many amendments tabled, and what we ended up was whole chaos. Protection of kindergartens, schools, hospitals, vulnerable groups, retirement homes. So all of that has been jettisoned. Why would you need to protect children? Schools or hospitals?

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, Even there, those areas I've just mentioned, the agri industry and their mouthpiece. To put it kindly, even there, that industry would not do anything at all for society. Now, you know that I am a beekeeper, I'm a chef, I'm involved in an agricultural farm. So I'm shocked. I'm shocked that we couldn't find a basic underlying principle, an underlying agreement on how we deal with various environmental issues. This is my worst experience. The fact was there was no willingness to compromise. There was just always a no from the right, the extreme right and from the europhobes.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, And if we look at Maria ARENA from the S&D, she's here available to tell you about what's going on with the socialists. And, of course, you know, Renew is not coherent as the conservative right. Then, there's the Greens. So we really have this whole spectrum in parliament. So if you look at Germany, I would say Germany is really the worst here. You know, they have really sworn at me, cursed me, threaten me with death threats. They've been statements against me, full statements. Of course, they said incorrectly that I wanted to have a complete ban in sensitive areas, that I was mad. It's not right.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, I'm not sure you've read all 160 pages of the legal text, but I am available to talk about the regulation with you. But it wasn't just my text that we were voting on. It was a watered down version of my text that we were voting on today, but it did show flexibility. I really bent over backwards to try to find a compromise, and yet it still wasn't possible. That was what was truly shocking.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, I would like to say a few things, which were there, and why a majority felt obliged to do greenwashing, but also to say to you as Europeans, and we voted for something which we can be proud of. Now, why that's not the case, I will tell you. While we cocluded the vote about half an hour ago, so I can't give you talk about all the amendments.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, But if you'd like more details, then please do ask them. They could provide extra information and I hope that we can answer any questions you have. So what's in this SUR, what did we vote on? What really motivates us, as the Greens, and how this majority acted.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, We have this amputated draft now, which now goes back to the committee, which might make this a more solid than go into a trilogue. But this referral back was rejected by some factions. There is no real European Parliament position as a result. Now some jubilant about this.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, The reduction goals I already mentioned at EU level, they remain at 50%, but there is no binding goal for the Member States, and that was a starting position and they were supposed to be 35% and not 50. But this had no consequences. The important thing for us as the Greens was to strengthen integrated pest management and think about how you can achieve these reductions with ecological measures, mechanical methods, good agricultural practices, which we already have in organic farming and a lot of conventional farmers, resulting in a decrease of 70, 80% of pesticides.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, This was an important instrument in the SUR. In order to ensure our agriculture is more sustainable as a whole, but this was voted down, and there's no binding rules for integrated pest management. This was taken out of the text, and that was the problem in the previous legislation issued. There was no obligation to prove that it was IPM.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, And the idea was to only use chemical pesticides as a last resort, but that didn't work. So now this is all being called into question. So we've lost. This SURE has been made obsolete as a result. We wanted to to help farmers with a transformation. We said let's move ahead together with courage to ensure more sustainability and to ensure financial incentives.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, And if there's a pattern, we'll help you get through this difficult period because we know that if you want to do organic farming, you need two or three years. But the funding was completely removed through the CAP or other methods, so no funding. So how can we accept a text if we as the Greens, as friends of smallholder farmers and family farmers, saying we want to help you,  how can we do that?

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, We also thought it was important to have independent advice paid by Member States and for farmers. So to make them independent from the agri industry, to help them to work out how to do this basically for free. But this was removed by the EPP. They wanted a three yearly  independent advice rather than yearly.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, Anyone who's a farmer knows how long three years is if you're farming. So either you want to make people more independent and support them. Give them more knowledge or freedom, or you don't.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, I would like to say here in front of the press that there was not and there is no total ban in my draft, the green draft in sensitive areas. There were plant protection products also for organic farming, those were allowed. In the ENVI committee, we had a complete exception with regard to the definition of these protected areas and we said to Member States, if you think that entire areas should be exempted from the SURE because it's not possible to find an alternative, then please go ahead and do that. The only thing is every three years you have to check that it's still the case.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, So for protected areas, I don't know what they were going on about. The definitions of areas at EU level were deleted. Member states could have done this themselves entirely. There were no prescriptions as to what had to be protected, just that it had to be sufficiently protected, and this would have led to major differences in implementation and would maybe have resulted in Member States not applying it. And that's why we had the SURE, but what we've ended up with is what we had already.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, What else can I tell you? What also irritated me, the goal of 2013 to 2017 was used as a benchmark, we wanted to bring it forward from 2011 to 2013, but not to all EU members who were in the European Union in 2011. So it wasn't fair and that's why we suggested 2013 to ensure that everyone was on a level playing field.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, Now if you take this time frame, then you've already dealt with pesticide. The use of pesticides has increased greatly from that time on. For IPM, there were not to be any binding rules, just guidelines. And so the proof of IPM was to be done away with, and there would be an electronic register. But if we don't know what farmers are doing, then why bother having a law?

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, So just write a letter to everyone and say, health officials have said they want to have a reduction, and I just assume that's going to be the case. So many things are no longer in the text. It's very bad. Something else which made me very angry, we included organic plant protection products and for low respect sites, we want to open the door and use this as another possibility in order to move towards this transformation.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, But the EPP, I don't know if it was the rights or the agri EPPs, they had this wonderful idea, and they said that to copper and heavy metal salts, which are part of the most hazardous pesticides, they should be an exception and be called organic pesticides. And that went through. I don't know why, because most people dealing with justice in Israel, etc. have no idea what salts are, what copper is, what highly hazardous pesticides are.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, But there are three who said, wow, we want to also the devices. So using 100 of 200 kilos of pesticides more also to be allowed, and they said, we don't need to look at this too closely. So there are a lot of things contained in this, which I think are unacceptable. And if you've been here for a long time and been involved in politics, it's a Tower of Babel, we're often prepared to make compromises in order to make any kind of progress as little as it is.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, Maybe I should try to wrap this up now but we're always prepared to make compromises, but we are not prepared to support something which doesn't make any sense, which is harmful and which has no effects. And I think that's where we have to draw the line.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, And finally, I'd like to say something. There are two major areas in this SURE. The measuring methods, they are harmonised, the risk indicator, which lies. So how we measure pesticide reduction now and there's a great video which I can share with you, which explains why this is wrong and why de facto, on paper, we have a pesticide reduction thanks to this false method in forthcoming years without it actually occurring in practice.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, And because of all these puzzles, I have to say, as the rapporteur, that I would have been prepared to take this to the bitter end in order to move ahead by ten centimetres, in order to show the way. But if my group says that's enough, enough is enough. We can't just lie to Europeans. We can't just bow to this and pretend that we've been successful when we haven't. And then I say yes, okay, then this was my speech, not as a rapporteur but as a Green group member. Thank you.

Q&A, Questions about the votes that were missing and about the next steps of the legislative process.

SOUNDBITE (German), Sarah WIENER (Greens/EFA, AT), Rapporteur, '-

 about the next steps of the legislative process.More questions

Q&A, Question about the possible second reading.

Q&A, Questions about whether there is enough time to finalise the process before the European elections and what the rapporteur wants to change for the next time.

Q&A, Questions about those who voted against.