Published Friday, 28 November 2003
Briefing on the European Commission proposal for a Regulation on maximum residue level of pesticides permitted in products of plant and animal origin (COM (2003) 117)
In this document, the Commission proposes a simplification of the current arrangements for securing pesticide safety within the EU. It proposes unified arrangements for setting safety levels and transfers responsibility for them from Member States to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The opinion of reviewers was that the harmonisation and simplification proposed is useful in principle. There are, however, a number of reservations about how it would work in practice and these are detailed below.