25/2019: Judgment in Cases T-716/14 Anthony C. Tweedale v European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) and T-329/17 Hautala and Others v EFSA

 EFSA’s decisions refusing access to the toxicity and carcinogenicity studies on the active substance glyphosate are annulled

The public interest in having access to the information relating to emissions into the environment is specifically to know not only what is, or foreseeably will be, released into the environment, but also to understand the way in which the environment could be affected by the emissions in question

Glyphosate is a chemical product used in pesticides which are plant protection products and is one of the most widely used herbicides in the EU.

Glyphosate was included on the list of active substances for the period from 1 July 2002 to 30 June 2012. That listing was temporarily extended until 31 December 2015. In view of the renewal of approval of the active substance glyphosate, Germany, as Rapporteur Member State, submitted to the Commission and to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) a ‘draft renewal assessment report’, published by EFSA on 12 March 2014.

In Case T-716/14, Mr Anthony C. Tweedale submitted to EFSA a request for access to documents pursuant to the regulation on public access to documents1 and the regulation on the application of the provisions of the Aarhus Convention on access to information2 (‘the Aarhus Regulation’). That request concerned two toxicity studies: ‘the two “key studies” used in order to set glyphosate’s acceptable daily intake (ADI)’.

1 Regulation

In Case T-329/17, Ms Heidi Hautala, Ms Michèle Rivasi, Mr Benedek Jávor and Mr Bart Staes, Members of the European Parliament, submitted to EFSA a request for access to documents pursuant to the same regulations. Their request concerned the parts relating to ‘material, experimental conditions and methods’ and to ‘results and discussion’ of the unpublished studies on the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. In their request, the applicants pointed out that, in March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer had concluded that glyphosate was potentially carcinogenic and that, nevertheless, in November 2015, the EFSA peer review had concluded that glyphosate would be unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.

In both cases, EFSA refused access to the documents, basing its decision, inter alia, on the following reasons: (i) disclosure of that information might seriously harm the commercial and financial interests of the companies which had submitted the study reports; (ii) there was no overriding public interest justifying disclosure; (iii) there was no overriding public interest justifying disclosure of the parts of the studies to which the applicants sought access, since those parts do not constitute information which ‘relates to emissions into the environment’, and (iv) EFSA considered that access to the parts of those studies was not necessary to verify the scientific assessment of the risks carried out in accordance with Regulation No. 1107/2009.

(...) (for the rest of the press release, please refer to the website)