EU is failing to cut pesticide use

Three years ago, the European Union seemed to be getting serious about pesticides. Some 40% of the bloc’s citizens had expressed concern about finding them in their food and over a million people were calling for a phaseout. As a sign of the times, the European Parliament was set to vote on a binding proposal to halve pesticide use by 2030 — taking the 2015-2017 average as a baseline.

«Without these changes, we risk pollinator and ecosystem collapse which will have even greater impacts on food security and food prices,» Stella Kyriakides, the former EU commissioner for health and food safety, said at the time.

Fast forward to 2026, and the bloc has shelved the mandatory reduction regulation for good. What’s more, in an effort to remove regulatory burdens for companies, the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, is now considering approving most pesticides permanently.

This move to loosen controls has met with resistance from campaign groups. Manon Rouby from Pesticide Action Network International said it would undermine «the link between pesticide use and the impact it has on human health.»

DW has analyzed how the use, sales and impact of pesticides evolved before and after the EU dropped its binding 50% cut.

Historical use and sales of pesticides in the EU 

The EU’s efforts to curb the use of pesticides date back to at least 2009, when the union adopted the first directive promoting sustainable practices. It suggested the substances only be used as a last resort.  

But the results were limited. In 2020, the European Court of Auditors concluded that the policy rollout was failing to achieve reduction goals. This finding prompted the European Commission to first propose the 50% compulsory cut up for vote in 2023.  

Both at that time and since, the EU remains among the top 10 global pesticide users among countries with major croplands. And that is despite a 18% drop compared to 2015 — based on estimates from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

But it’s a different picture at a national level. As there is no comparable EU data on pesticide use per country, sales figures serve as a proxy. In 2024, the most recent year for which data exists, the top five purchasing countries showed an upward trend, with sales almost 10% higher than in 2023 when the reduction goal was still looming. 

These five countries — Spain, France, Italy, Germany and Poland — which are also the top EU agricultural producers, accounted for 76% of total sales in 2024.

The U-turn on policy priorities «is a reflection of the EU in general being very reluctant to put restrictions to farmers in a way that comes as burdensome,» said Lindsey Hendricks-Franco, environmental researcher at the German think tank Ecologic Institute. She added that non-binding targets are unlikely to reduce use. 

Pesticide sales up in 2024, including risky types 

Pesticide sales boomed in several EU countries in 2024, as compared to the 2015-2017 average baseline. They increased by about a quarter in Bulgaria and Austria, but growth was weaker in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Sales fell in 20 EU member states. Italy, the EU country with the highest reduction rate, decreased its sales by 33%.

While 14% lower than in 2015, overall 2024 pesticide sales were 8% higherthan the year before, when the mandatory reduction target was still under consideration. 

Hendricks-Franco said that though pesticide sales would probably not have fallen by 50% had the obligatory cut been adopted, they would likely have been reduced «by more than the current trend.»

The decline over the 2014-2024 decade was lower for a subgroup of highly hazardous pesticides, known for their potentially harmful effect on people and the environment. By 2024, the most recent reporting year, the sale of these hazardous substances had increased by 27% in total compared with the previous year — particularly driven by increased sales in Spain, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia.

Among these chemicals is glyphosate, a controversial pesticide that has been linked to cancer risk and miscarriage. While the EU says the use of hazardous pesticides has decreased, glyphosate sales rose more than 44% between 2015 and 2024.

Risks of using pesticides

As the sales volume of pesticides doesn’t account for toxicity and application rate, it reveals little about the risks to people and the environment. Pesticides have been linked to biodiversity loss and have been found to be extremely harmful to fish and other species.

When present in groundwater and soils, these chemicals damage bees, birds and aquatic life, according to a 2022 UN report . Yet their residue in many European rivers far exceeds the EU’s safe thresholds set up since 2000 for each individual pesticide.

Only Lithuania and Slovenia reported staying within the recommended levels of pesticides in rivers in 2023. Sweden showed the highest reduction for residues. It went from double the recommended limit in 2018 — the first year with comparable data for most EU countries — to 7% above the threshold five years later.

In the same time span, Denmark, Latvia and Hungary registered rising concentrations. In 2023, pesticide residue in rivers in these countries exceeded the safe thresholds by 50% or more.

Why the 50% reduction proposal wasn’t passed 

Against this backdrop of 19 out of 27 EU member states already exceeding pesticide thresholds meant to protect the environment and human health, the European Parliament proceeded with the November 2023 vote on the proposal to cut future pesticide use in half.  

But it was rejected, with 299 votes against and 207 in favor. Among those who didn’t back the proposal were the Greens and left-wing groups, who said the text had been weakened in crucial areas.

«It was just not a text that we could in good conscience vote for,» Sarah Wiener, a Green Party lawmaker from Austria, wrote in a press release at the time, adding that it was «very weak. Especially when it comes to the protection of public health and biodiversity as well as support for farmers.»

Since that vote, the European Commission’s focus has shifted from reducing pesticides to reducing bureaucratic hurdles for companies, for example by cutting administrative costs. In late 2025, they put a new proposal on the table that would entail automatically approving most pesticides without reevaluating their safety after their initial approval period.

Hendricks-Franco of the Ecologic Institute said the idea means «pesticides that are risky will stay on the market longer,» adding that it sends a message from the EU «that health risks are no longer pressing.»

The European Commission has argued that fewer regulatory burdens will make it easier to put more low-risk pesticides onto the market. And that, said Eva Hrncirova, commission’s spokesperson, will lead to a shift «away from more hazardous chemical substances.»

The EU is one of the 196 signatories of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which is committed to halving the environmental risks from pesticides by 2030.

«There are worries and questions as to how this is compatible with the new developments that we see at the EU level,» said Rouby of the Pesticide Action Network.

Edited by: Gianna-Carina Grün and Tamsin Walker

Fact check: Eva Lopez

For data, code and methodology behind this analysis, see this GitHub repository. More data-driven stories from DW can be found here.

This project was partially funded by the European Data Journalism Network (EDJnet) in context of ChatEurope.