The European Commission has proposed extending the licence for glyphosate by five years after its initial plan for a 10-year approval did not pass.
An initial round of votes on whether to renew glyphosate, the active agent of Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup, began on Wednesday (25 October).
But Member States failed to agree on a licence extension, delaying a decision that needs to be taken before the end of the year on the widely used herbicide.
The Commission said in a statement that it had now submitted to EU countries its proposal for a five-year approval, with a vote now expected at the next sitting of the relevant committee on November 9.
On Wednesday, 16 countries - Bulgaria, Denmark, Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Spain, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania,
Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Finland and the UK - voted in favour of the renewal.
That falls short of the threshold needed to reach a qualified majority.
Germany and Portugal abstained while Belgium, Greece, Croatia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Austria, Slovenia and Sweden voted against the renewal.
France, one of the countries opposing a 10-year approval, said on Wednesday that it was prepared to accept a four-year licence extension.
Controversy
The news follows mounting opposition to the widely used pesticide grows in several powerful agricultural countries, such as France.
The EU passed an 18-month extension in June 2016 after the bloc failed to agree on a previous proposal to extend the license for 15 years. The current 18-month term expires at the end of the year.
Farm groups across the EU are threatening to sue the European Commission if it fails to decide on a vote to grant glyphosate a new licence.
Despite the controversy of glyphosate, the European Chemical Agency has given the green light to the chemical.
It said it found "there is no evidence that glyphosate is having a harmful effect on human hormone systems".
This decision is in stark contrast to a separate assessment by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which pointed out that the herbicide solution was “probably carcinogenic to humans”.
