22
Nov
2023
Watch
Revised pollinators initiative - a new deal for pollinators (debate)
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would say that today is a black day. We lost today. We lost because our text on the reduction of pesticides, which was supposed to include a 50% reduction in pesticides and a ban on the most toxic pesticides in 2030, was a failure. So this resolution on pollinators is a bit of a last chance text. Pollinating insects, indeed, are in jeopardy, in announced disappearance. And without them, we with. So the alarms have been ringing for years. For more than a decade, nature has been sending us increasingly clear signals that are sufficiently clear for this scientific consensus to prevail: Empty European landscapes and pollinating insects, while four out of five cultivated species depend on pollinators to reproduce. I will still quote a few figures. In the last three years, insect population falls of up to 75% have been observed, and the number of butterflies has decreased by 36% in ten years in Europe. A new analysis, signed in November 2023 by European naturalists, estimates that nearly 2 million species are endangered, of which 25% are insects, which is double the previous estimates. Figures revealing the extent of the problem. The warning is there without a change of system, if we do not leave intensive agriculture, bottled with pesticides and biocides, this text alone will not reduce the disappearance of pollinators in Europe. And here, today, I really have a lot on my heart because the fact that we lost this legislation, the fact that Members did not want to send it back to ENVI, so what is our hope? The only hope is for Member States to try to have a national policy to make pesticide-free corridors. Because, contrary to what one colleague said, the decrease in pollinators is due to pesticides. So I hope that it is not too late and that we will have the energy, the strength and the conviction at the level of our different governments to really drastically reduce pesticides.