Public interest win as EU Court annuls EFSA refusal to disclose glyphosate data

07 March 2019
by eub2 -- last modified 07 March 2019

This morning, the European Court of Justice annuled the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) refusal to disclose data from industry-owned scientific studies on the toxicity of glyphosate.

Responding to the ruling, Corporate Europe Observatory's agribusiness researcher Martin Pigeon said:

"This ruling is very important as it confirms the Court's case law on the overriding public interest in public access to all toxicity study data for pesticides. The ruling extends this disclosure requirement to the sections on 'material, experimental conditions and methods' as well as 'results and discussion', which EFSA had refused to disclose to Corporate Europe Observatory when we requested the studies underlying its glyphosate evaluation.

"So today's ruling provides EFSA with a straightforward legal guideline for dealing with future disclosure requests: Names and signatures of individuals aside, studies must be disclosed in their entirety.

"The timing of this ruling is also very meaningful, as the European Parliament will soon adopt in plenary the revised General Food Law, making data disclosure by EFSA systematic and mandatory. And while the EU Commission and EFSA will then decide on implementing rules specifying when commercial interest and intellectual property protection may still justify data confidentiality, today's court ruling makes it clear that such arguments can no longer be used against data disclosure as far as pesticides are concerned."

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) is a research and campaign group working to expose and challenge the privileged access and influence enjoyed by corporations and their lobby groups in EU policy making.

Corporate Europe Observatory