The European Commission has decided to extend the current approval for the herbicide, glyphosate, by a year until December 15th 2023. The decision has been made official through EU Regulation 2022/2364, which amends the approval period for the active ingredient. The amendment has been made to Regulation 540/2011, which deals with the list of ais approved in the EU. The decision will come into force on December 12th.

The Commission's action was seen as inevitable following inconclusive votes by the EU's Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF) in October and by an Appeal Committee in November.

Glyphosate is currently in the reapproval process. The active ingredient's existing approval was to run out on December 15th. But an extension was necessitated following the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) inability to finish its reassessment in time. In May, the EFSA stated that it required more time for its reassessment. Under the revised timetable, conclusions of the EFSA's peer review are expected to be made available to the Commission and member states by July 2023. That led to the Commission's proposal of a one-year extension through a draft Regulation.

The Glyphosate Renewal Group (GRG), which is the applicant for the ai's reapproval, has welcomed the extension, which will allow sufficient time for the EFSA to conclude the ongoing scientific evaluation.

Assessment delays

The EFSA's extension was necessitated owing to the "unprecedented number of comments" to the consultations carried out by it and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) on the draft assessments of glyphosate last year. The input received from the consultations, together with the replies received by the EFSA from the GRG in response to its request for additional information, added a significant amount of information to a dossier that already contained far more scientific data than are usually available for such assessments. The EFSA stated that the additional information would be considered by the Assessment Group on Glyphosate (AGG), composed of four EU member states - France, Hungary, Netherlands and Sweden - that is updating its initial draft renewal assessment report (dRAR).

Following the EFSA's extension to its assessment, the Risk Assessment Committee (RAC) of the ECHA concluded that glyphosate should not be classified as a carcinogen. Its assessment of hazard classifications for the ai concluded that the available scientific evidence did not meet the criteria to classify glyphosate for specific target organ toxicity, or as a carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic substance.

This article was published by S&P Global Commodity Insights and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.