The association Générations Futures is filing two legal actions against the marketing authorizations (AMM: autorisation de mise sur le marché) issued by ANSES (Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail) for two insecticides containing the neonicotinoid Sulfoxaflor: Closer and Transform.
The first action seeks to have the AMM urgently withdrawn for interim relief because these products pose a serious and immediate threat to bees and other pollinators. The government has given ANSES three months to review the two AMM, but the association considers this delay much too long to prevent environmental damage. The second appeal is an appeal on the merits before the Administrative Tribunal. The association is represented in this file by François Lafforgue, lawyer.
Générations Futures decided to file these appeals on the basis of data from the EFSA scientific assessment, which considers that the risk is high for bees. Yet the EU has authorized the active ingredient sulfoxaflor in 2015 … even though important data on the toxicity of this molecule to bees and other pollinators were missing in the dossier. The firm that requested the authorization of sulfoxaflor (Dow Chemical) had two years to provide the data (called ‘confirmatory data’ by the EU). The careful examination of the file shows that the opinion of the ANSES from June 2017 that lead to these marketing authorizations has been delivered even though these confirmatory data were still missing.
“The safety of these two products for bees and pollinators is therefore not established and they must be removed immediately from the market.” François Veillerette, Director of Générations Futures, says. “Now the government needs to take into account the full consequences of this, and in the future to clearly oppose the registration of any pesticide containing a substance from the neonicotinoids family, including new substances such as sulfoxaflor, or flupyradifurone, as provided in the Biodiversity Act.”

1 : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2014.3692/epdf
2 : https://www.anses.fr/fr/system/files/CLOSER_PAMN_2015-0162_Ans.pdf