Ireland abstains as EU imposes insecticide ban to protect bees

Three insecticides blamed for killing huge numbers of bees and endangering food crops throughout the world will be partially banned by the EU.

Ireland voted against the ban last month following intense lobbying by industry, but changed position slightly and abstained from the vote in Brussels yesterday.

The majority of countries voted for the ban, but there were not enough votes to enforce it. This left it open to the European Commission to take action and it decided to impose temporary new rules.

As a result, three neonicotinoid, containing nicotine similar to that found in cigarettes, insecticides will be banned from being used to coat seeds, used in the soil and sprayed on leaves from December next for two years.

They can still be used in crops in greenhouses, on winter cereals, on crops not attractive to bees, and in the open air after flowering.

A report from the European Food Safety Authority in January linked the insecticides to the bee deaths, saying there was a “high acute risk” for bees and other pollinators from several crops such as maize, cereals, sunflower, and oilseed rape treated with the insecticides.

The EFSA usually makes its assessments on available data that frequently comes from manufacturers, and in this case it said it was unable to finalise its assessments “due to shortcomings in the available data”.

Scientific studies published last year in the US, where half the bee population has disappeared in the past six months, have linked neonicotinoids to the collapse of the bee population. Bees are essential to the production of food and the world’s ecosystems.

Greenpeace published a report identifying seven pesticides — four of them neoicotinoids — they say are linked to bee deaths, and is campaigning to have two removed from the market. Other factors, such as diseases, parasites, climate change, and wider industrial agriculture practices, also contributed.

Greenpeace spokesman Marco Contiero said the two-year ban was not necessarily long enough to lead to a resurgence in the bee population, especially since the insecticides remain in the soil and contaminate other crops planted here.

The two main producers of the insecticides are the German Bayer group and Switzerland’s Syngenta. Greenpeace claimed that banning the insecticides would endanger food production throughout the EU.

A number of countries have imposed bans of their own, with France saying in June that it would move to ban one of the insecticides.

Italy banned maize seeds treated with the insecticides, while Slovenia and Germany also imposed restrictions. A British report said that even low doses were affecting colonies of bees, but Britain was one of eight countries that opposed the ban, as did Italy, Portugal, and Austria.

Ireland, Greece, Denmark, and Finland abstained from the vote. An Irish spokesperson said that Ireland was working to find a “workable compromise to the proposal. “We wanted to allow time for further consideration of the scientific evidence and create space for a compromise that could have the broad support of all member states. This did not prove possible, hence we didn’t oppose it today.”

Announcing the temporary ban, European health and consumer commissioner Tonio Borg said that the Commission would go ahead with its action.