On January 27, 2015, the European Union (EU) Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed agreed to a proposed list of 77 pesticide active substances to be classified as Candidates for Substitution (CFS). The draft list of CFS is available at online.  A Question and Answer (Q&A) document regarding the CFS list is available online. Additional information regarding the proposed list is also available online.

This list is an important and long-awaited development under the Plant Protection Product (PPP) Regulation (EC) No. 1107/2009. The EC Standing Committee clarifies that the CFS active substances are not banned and that approved CFS active substances that will remain on the EU market, although there are potentially significant consequences for those listed active substances. Most challenging is the requirement that Member States do the following for new applications for authorization of PPPs containing CFS active substances that are submitted after August 1, 2015: (1) perform a comparative assessment when evaluating an application for authorization for a plant protection product containing an active substance approved as a CFS; (2) not authorize or restrict the use of a plant protection product containing a CFS for use on a particular crop where the comparative assessment weighing up the risks and benefits demonstrates that safer alternatives exist. In addition, substances not evaluated by the EC Standing Committee (e.g., substances approved after January 1, 2013), can be identified as a CFS under PPP Regulation Article 24. In those cases, any approval will be limited to a maximum of seven years, compared to 10 or 15 years for other active substances.

The next step will be review and adoption of the CFS list by the European Commission, and then publication of the list as a Commission Regulation in the Official Journal.