PAN Europe’s feedback on Commission’s public consultation: European Food Safety Authority – evaluation of performance 2017-2024

EFSA needs to improve its independence One of the crucial roles in the mission of EFSA is to be independent; its work should not be influenced by companies that have a commercial interest to place their pesticide products in the market and therefore would like to influence the decisions in relation to the approval of pesticides to protect their profit. [...] Considering the absence of a DNT study for glyphosate acid and any long-term health toxicity studies for the formulation in the applicant's dossier, EFSA should have clearly communicated the risks identified to the risk managers and that the approval criteria for glyphosate are not met. [...] The absence of internationally agreed guidelines is in our view not a valid argument to not conclude on the wide range of available the placing on the market of safeners, synergists and co-formulants contained in such a product must also be subject to assessments to determine whether they have any harmful effect" "It is therefore the task of the competent authorities, when examining an application. [...] The EU Court of Justice judgement C-616/17 also indicates that greater weight should not systematically be given to regulatory studies and that the most recent studies should be taken into account (§94: “With that in mind, it is the duty of the competent authorities, in particular, to take account of the most reliable scientific data available and the most recent results of international research. [...] Instead of concluding that the lack of data in the file does not allow the EFSA to conclude on any safe use of the pesticide, the EFSA presents as a simple 'data gap' the lack of information on major toxicity endpoints such as genotoxicity or toxicity to the environment (e.g.