Mercosur and pesticides

In this column entitled ‘Mercosur and pesticides: the European Commission's misleading response’,  Carl Gaigné and Mathieu Parenti show that while the Commission's promise to lower the maximum residue limits (MRLs) for active substances in imported products for pesticides banned in the EU to the detection threshold seems firm and appealing, it will prove inefficient, as these MRLs only measure residues in the final product and not the actual use of pesticides at the production stage. This amounts to shifting, rather than reducing, the EU's environmental footprint. The authors then show how a phytosanitary adjustment mechanism at borders, proposed in the work of the European Tax Observatory and inspired by the carbon mechanism (MACF) adopted in 2023, would be a more promising solution.

Following this opinion article, Carl Gaigné was also interviewed by La Montagne, France Info and Le Devoir.