On June 29, 2021, the Lyon Administrative Court of Appeal upheld the annulment of the marketing authorization for Round Up Pro 360, issued on March 6, 2017 by ANSES, thereby rejecting the complaints filed by Bayer and ANSES against the first-instance judgment of January 15, 2019.

The Administrative Court of Appeal recalls that if an active substance of a plant protection product is approved by the Community authorities, the national authority, seized of an application for marketing authorization for such a product, has a discretionary power to determine whether there is detailed evidence to support the hypothesis of a risk of serious and irreversible damage to the environment, or of damage to the environment likely to cause serious harm to health, which would justify application of the precautionary principle, despite the remaining uncertainties as to its reality and scope in the light of current scientific knowledge.

In this case, ANSES authorized the marketing of Roundup Pro 360 as a resale product of another plant protection product of the same composition, Typhon, whose evaluations predated 2013. It therefore did not carry out a new evaluation of the preparation. However, on the date of the authorization in dispute, all the studies were of such a nature as to support the hypothesis of a risk of damage to the environment, linked to the use of glyphosate but also to the combination of glyphosate with other co-formulants in preparations, likely to cause serious harm to health, on the date of the disputed decision, and justified, despite the remaining uncertainties as to its reality and scope in the current state of scientific knowledge, the application of the precautionary principle.

ANSES therefore failed to comply with the precautionary principle set out in Article 5 of the Charter of the Environment, in the absence of an assessment procedure, and irrespective of the precautionary measures imposed.