After a long debate and several setbacks glyphosate license in the EU was renewed for a period of five years. On 27 November 2017, a positive opinion was reached with 18 Member States voting in favour of the renewal, 9 against and 1 abstaining.
On the same topic and responding to the European Citizens’ Initiative “Ban Glyphosate”, the Commission published a communication in December. In this communication the Commission states that a ban depends on Member States, not on the Commission, and announced a legislative proposal for spring 2018 to enhance the transparency, quality and independence of scientific assessments of substances, such as public access to raw data. The Commission also announced future amendments to the legislation to strengthen the governance of the conduct of relevant studies, which could include for example the involvement of public authorities in the process of deciding which studies need to be conducted for a specific case. To know more about this topic, please consult the outcomes of this EuCheMS-Pavel Poc European Parliament workshop as well as this Chemistry in Europe article.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/ ; http://europa.eu/