EU Commission faces call to resign over failure to regulate hormone-disrupting chemicals

The ongoing row over the Commission’s failure to establish a science-based system for regulating chemicals that are thought to disrupt the human hormonal system has taken a fresh twist, with the European Parliament now due to debate a motion calling on Jean-Claude Juncker to resign as president over the matter.

The “motion of censure” put down by 82 populist MEPs, led by the anti-establishment Italian Five Star Movement, comes on the heels of a court ruling that there has been an illegal delay in defining endocrine disruptors.

The motion forces a parliamentary vote on the Commission’s resignation. However, it requires a two-thirds majority to pass, and is therefore highly unlikely to succeed. The parliament’s two biggest blocs – Juncker’s centre-right Christian Democrat group, the biggest in the assembly, and the Socialists – are expected to stand behind the Commission president.

The motion is likely to be rejected, admitted Piernicola Pedicini, the Italian MEP who brought it forward, "unless my colleagues realise that the order to vote against the motion, dictated by their political parties [and] under the influence of governments and industrial and financial lobbies, is not lawful and must be ignored."

However the censure vote does add pressure on the Commission, which has failed to come up with an agreed system for regulating hormone disrupting chemicals for several years, amid lobbying from the pesticides and chemical industries on the one side and environmentalists on the other.

Legal obligation

Endocrine disruptors (EDCs) are chemicals that interfere with the human hormonal system. They have been associated with a wide range of problems including infertility, congenital deformities, obesity, diabetes and cancer. EDCs are mostly man-made and are found in products including pesticides, plastics, personal care products and as contaminants in food.

The Commission was under a legal obligation to define stricter criteria for these chemicals by December 2013 but delayed its decision, arguing the relationship between EDCs and health is not clear and requires more detailed studies.

Fed up with the nearly three-year-long stalemate, the Swedish government brought the Commission to the European Court of Justice, which condemned the Commission’s inaction in a ruling made last December. France, Finland, Netherlands and Denmark backed the case.

Responding to the motion of censure, Commission spokesman for health and the environment Enrico Brivio promised action. “The Commission has the firm intention to comply with its own obligations and with the judgment of 16 December 2015 by the EU Court of Justice. [It] has made a clear commitment to present new scientific criteria before the end of June,” he said.

This is the second censure vote the Juncker Commission has faced – the first followed revelations that Luxembourg facilitated large-scale tax avoidance when he was prime minister.

Impact assessment

The Commission says pending legislation on EDCs will be based on World Health Organization (WHO) classification, which divides hormone disruptors into three categories: proven, probable and possible.

The Commission is currently screening approximately 600 chemicals – work which is supposed to be completed soon.

In April, an investigation led to the banning of two herbicides, Amitrole and Isoproturon, on suspicion of causing congenital defects, as well as having toxic effects on the thyroid gland and reproductive organs.

This week the Commission will decide whether to re-authorise glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world’s best-selling herbicide, Monsanto’s Roundup. The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said last March that glyphosate “probably” causes cancer in humans, a claim disputed by some subsequent studies, including one carried out by the European Food Safety Authority.

Lack of agreement

Many health and environmental groups want the Commission and its scientific advisers to systematically test all pesticides before they go to market.

As it stands, the Commission reviews chemicals on a case-by-case basis. Chemical companies do their own tests, but their data is not made public.

“It is unacceptable to see the Commission delaying to protect its people from these chemicals and giving priority to the impact that such a regulation may have on the market and trade,” said Angeliki Lyssimachou, an environmental toxicologist with the conservation group Pesticide Action Network. “These chemicals require new testing methods that have not been incorporated into legislation yet and there is an immediate need to identify and regulate these substances.”

Environmentalist lobbying has fed the stalemate too. In 2013, the former chief science adviser to the Commission, Anne Glover, was accused of “lending credence to the industry” after she organised a meeting in her office between scientists from both sides of the argument.

Scientific uncertainty remains regarding the extent of the health and environmental effects of EDCs and in particular of what dose is required to cause ill-effects.

Some scientists accuse NGOs of over-interpreting study results. A statement was issued last week by four academics, Daniel Dietrich, from the University of Konstanz; Helmut Greim, TU Munich; Alan Boobis, Imperial College London; and Richard Sharp, Edinburgh University, in which they call themselves “concerned toxicologists”.

“Public perception is dominated by certain scientists, NGOs and well-funded pressure groups, who categorically assert that [endocrine disrupting chemicals] contribute to human cancer, reproductive disorders, obesity and type 2 diabetes. The reality is that there is no robust, consistent scientific evidence to support such a dogmatic stance, and indeed most of the robust evidence points in the opposite direction,” they said.

The chemicals industry meanwhile is trying to dissuade the Commission from hasty measures. “We believe that [safety] can continue to be achieved without impacting the ability of European farmers to control pests and diseases in the crops they grow,” European Crop Protection Association head Jean-Charles Bocquet. “It would be counter-productive to ban substances that provide valuable benefits to farmers if that did not make any positive contribution to human health and environmental safety.”

Members of the group include big agrochemical players such as DuPont, BASF, Bayer and Monsanto. Attempts were made to contact these companies for further comment.

“We remain concerned by the way that science is increasingly misrepresented in the public and political debate: this can leave European consumers uncertain, and undermines their confidence in the EU food safety system and its ability to protect the food that they eat,” Bocquet added.

At least 10 per cent of the 751 MEPs must sign for a censure motion to go to a vote. The signatories to the EDC motion include MEPs from most of the major left-wing and right-wing anti-EU populist parties. In addition to those from the Italian Five Star Movement, led by former comedian Beppe Grillo, and the National Front, led by France’s Marine Le Pen, signatures were collected from Austria’s far-right Freedom party, the Dutch far-right Freedom Party, Italy’s Northern League and Ireland’s Sinn Féin.