Last week, a court in Luxembourg overturned the national ban on the active ingredient glyphosate. Across the EU, glyphosate is thus still permitted until at least December 15, 2023. Timo Landenberger analyzes how the use of the herbicide affects the earth’s microorganisms and what the chances are for an EU-wide ban on glyphosate.
The development of artificial intelligence has obviously picked up speed in recent months. The negotiators in the European Parliament must find a way to adequately regulate offerings such as ChatGPT. They reject a moratorium, as demanded by Tesla founder Elon Musk, among others. Corinna Visser asked the rapporteurs in the European Parliament.
The G7 environment ministers are meeting in Japan this weekend. Germany is focusing on resource conservation and the circular economy. German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) wants to put companies in the driver’s seat. They can “do something practical against resource waste through sustainable supply chains or durable product design,” Lemke writes in a position paper for Table.Media.
Josep Borrell, on the other hand, will have to stay at home. The EU foreign affairs representative had actually planned to arrive in Beijing today. But he has canceled his trip because of a Covid infection. He had tested positive for Covid-19 and thus had to postpone the trip, Borrell wrote on Twitter. He is doing well and has no symptoms.
After the Luxembourg Administrative Court overturned the national ban on the herbicide glyphosate, the debate about the controversial active ingredient is also gaining momentum again at the EU level. Especially since the reduction of chemical pesticides under the Pesticides Regulation is currently one of the most controversial goals of European environmental and agricultural policy.
Luxembourg was the first EU member to adopt a national ban on glyphosate in January 2021. Bayer, the chemical company and glyphosate manufacturer, filed a lawsuit against the ban, and has now been upheld by the court of second instance. As long as the active ingredient is permitted at the EU level, there is no reason for a national go-it-alone, the court said in its reasoning. According to the court, glyphosate poses “no unacceptable risks to public and animal health.”
Norbert Fraeyman, a toxicologist at Ghent University, sees things differently. The question of the active ingredient’s harmfulness is too limited to carcinogenicity. Glyphosate is indeed carcinogenic, but the factor is actually many times lower than smoking, for example, and on about the same level as meat consumption. Much more important, but hardly recognized, are the negative effects on the microbiome and thus on the central nervous system. This not only has health consequences for humans but threatens numerous insect and bird species.
In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic,” setting off a heated debate. Nevertheless, it is now the most widely used herbicide in the world, and that is precisely the main problem, Fraeyman said. As a result of its overuse, many weeds have developed resistance to the active ingredient, leading to even greater use in agriculture.
“Glyphosate must be banned in the agricultural sector,” the scientist demands. “And not just because it’s carcinogenic, but because of its extremely high overall toxic profile and the effort that would be required to contain its effects.”
An EU-wide ban on glyphosate was on the agenda in Brussels for the first time in 2017. A corresponding citizens’ initiative reached over one million signatures. However, some organizations, including the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), concluded the active ingredient was safe. The approval was thus granted for a further five years, also with the consent of the German government.
In December 2022, the EU Commission extended the approval by another year until mid-December after a long dispute with the member states. The official reason: the review process for renewed approval by EFSA had not yet been completed. A corresponding result is expected in July, with a vote in the fall.
Whether there will then be an EU-wide ban on glyphosate is difficult to judge at present, says Sarah Wiener (Greens), a member of the European Parliament. She said there is no majority trend foreseeable among the member states. “If the ban doesn’t come this year, it will definitely come later,” she said. The research is clear, risk and damage to biodiversity and health have become unacceptable, says the agricultural politician and calls on the Commission to observe the precautionary principle.
“Europe has the most stringent approval system for crop protection products in the world,” counters industry association Agrar. Crop protection products approved in Europe are safe and urgently needed for yield and quality assurance.
Nevertheless, agriculture is prepared to reduce use even further, says Bernhard Krüsken, Secretary General of the German Farmers’ Association. However, this can only work through technical and voluntary solutions, not through bans, which always lead to consequences in cultivation.
“In this case, the only alternative is to increase the use of the plow again. This, in turn, requires much more energy and thus leads to a significant increase in carbon emissions. The ban on this active ingredient is therefore counterproductive against the backdrop of climate change,” says Krüsken.
The German government nevertheless intends to stick to its banning plans and remove glyphosate from the market by the end of 2023 in accordance with the coalition agreement. “Should the approval be extended at the EU level, we will examine further steps for a national ban on its use,” said a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Ministry.
Strict rules on the use of glyphosate have already been in place in Germany since the amendment of the Plant Protection Regulation in the fall of 2021. For example, the herbicide may only be used in agriculture if other measures cannot be implemented. Its use is already banned in gardens or parks.
Negotiators dealing with the AI Act in the European Parliament are rejecting a moratorium on AI development. Elon Musk and other celebrities called for a six-month pause in AI development in an open letter. This was prompted by the rapid development of large-scale language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT.
However, the reporters still want to include general-purpose AI (GPAI) or, more precisely, powerful basic models, which include ChatGPT, in the AI Act. However, if the vote in the committees (IMCO and LIBE) is to take place on April 26, as planned, there is little time to reach an agreement.
“I don’t think much of a moratorium because it would mean ignoring reality,” says Axel Voss, shadow rapporteur for the EPP. If development in the West stops now, it will continue in the East. That is why we cannot simply bury our heads in the sand. “We also need to pull ourselves together more as legislators and simply act faster, or at least set a direction for AI development,” Voss says. “A break is not going to work.”
For once, Sergey Lagodinsky, shadow rapporteur for the Greens/EFA, agrees with him. Lagodinsky considers the calls for a moratorium populist and sees no reason to follow it. “We want to regulate AI and regulate it in such a way that we can also follow up, should that be necessary.”
But regarding the regulation of GPAI, for example, there is a difficulty. Actually, general-purpose AI does not fit into the system of the Act, and the Commission had not included it in its proposal. That is because the AI Act takes a risk-based approach.
Particularly harmful AI practices that violate the Union’s values are prohibited. Applications of AI systems that pose high risks to fundamental rights and security are allowed but are subject to regulation. Only transparency obligations apply to other AI systems that do not pose a high risk. Thus, obligations are related to the use case, but GPAI is not reduced to any specific application by definition.
How the rapporteurs Brando Benifei (S&D) and Dragoş Tudorache (Renew) now want to incorporate powerful basic models into regulation is still open. “We will propose a set of rules,” is the word from the environment. What those will be, even the shadow rapporteurs do not know yet.
The Greens, Lagodinsky says, wanted GPAI included in the regulation initially. “The rapporteurs and other groups didn’t want to address it at all – until ChatGPT came along,” he recalls. His original proposal was to treat basic models that are understandably and predictably used in high-risk applications as high-risk technology. “I would like to emphasize again, that high-risk is not about prohibition, but about transparency and documentation requirements,” Lagodinsky says. These are often confused, he adds.
Creating a separate category in the regulation for GPAI, as often called for in the public debate, is considered excessive by Voss. “Of course, we can talk about the danger of ChatGPT,” says Voss. Voss has formulated his questions to the developer OpenAI in an open letter.
But when it comes to legislation, he said, Parliament cannot leave to chance what was published at the time and what thus does or does not make it into law. “But what we determine must apply generally.”
Experts would have to decide whether ChatGPT is a high-risk AI or not. “We’re just providing the framework for developers to follow,” Voss says. “We’re not going to take on every single application, which I think is already problematic with facial recognition.”
GPAI is about achieving fair burden sharing. If the base model is not yet a high-risk application, it is possible to build a high-risk application on top of it, he said. “The operators then need the information from the developer of the base model to meet the requirements from the AI Act.”
But general-purpose AI is not the only point of open discussion. “I still see a lot of open construction sites,” Lagodinsky says. On the agenda for this Thursday’s Shadows meeting are:
Two more meetings of the shadow rapporteurs are scheduled for next week. The negotiations – also on general-purpose AI – must then be concluded to stay on schedule.
“Personally, I’m very optimistic about progress and innovation,” Lagodinsky explains. The point, he says, is precisely not to ban the use of AI. “We should look more closely at the direction in which developments are going and remain responsive to further develop and adapt the law in the future.” This is certainly possible, he said, for example, through the classification of high-risk systems in the annex. The annex, which the Commission can add to, opens a “window for executive flexibility,” he said.
Here, too, Voss expresses a similar view: “With digital developments, we need rather breathing documents with a certain flexibility, where problem reduction should also take place in between.” He also thinks legislators should not always think in terms of regulation but perhaps also in terms of guidelines. These, too, could be secured by Parliament, he adds. “There should be no lack of legitimacy,” Voss says. “But we are too slow in the way we have handled things so far.”
Voss also already has a proposal for the coming legislature: “We need to think about how to combine all of these governance requirements from AI, data protection, DSA, and DMA, from data governance and the Data Act,” Voss demands. Looking at everything in isolation would not make sense, he says. “We need a horizontal approach to define what works and what doesn’t.”
When it comes to environmental protection, many people first think of clean rivers, blooming meadows, and nature reserves. When it comes to climate action, wind farms, EVs, and heat pumps come to mind. Undoubtedly, renewable energies and nature conservation are central building blocks for making our country climate-neutral and preserving natural living conditions. However, another building block is often forgotten: the many things that are manufactured, sold, and consumed every day.
Valuable resources are consumed wherever something is produced, whether it’s sneakers, cell phones, or single-family homes. And it is increasing every year. Between 1970 and 2017, the consumption of natural resources worldwide tripled. Without appropriate measures, it would double again by 2060.
Raw materials for goods must be mined, pumped from the ground, and in many cases, separated from rock or processed with chemicals. They must be transported, further processed and packaged – all with high energy consumption and CO2 emissions and sometimes massive burdens on soils, waters, flora and fauna. According to calculations by the International Resource Panel (IRP), at least half of all greenhouse gas emissions and about 90 percent of biodiversity loss and global water problems are due to the extraction and processing of resources.
If we want to make our economy climate-neutral and environmentally friendly, resource conservation is the sleeping giant. It needs to be awakened.
The goal must be to consume significantly fewer primary raw materials – i.e., raw materials that enter the economic cycle anew – and to close material cycles. This has been agreed by the federal government in the coalition agreement. Nature sets an example for us; it is a single cycle: Leaves fall to the ground in a forest. Insects, fungi and microorganisms decompose them, forming valuable humus that nourishes trees and plants.
Nature should be a model for us. Raw materials that are already in circulation must be given a second, third, and fourth life as secondary raw materials. This goes far beyond recycling. Products must be designed from the beginning to be durable, easy to repair and disassemble, and their components recyclable. Only then does the circle close to a circular economy that ends resource waste. In times of scarce and expensive raw materials, we also secure the resilience and competitiveness of our economy.
As Minister of the Environment, I am committed to placing even greater emphasis on resource protection in addressing global environmental crises.
To this end, I would like to use the upcoming meeting of G7 environment ministers on April 15 and 16 in Japan. The major industrialized nations are also major consumers of resources and therefore bear a special responsibility. Last year, under German presidency, the G7 countries recognized the connection between resource consumption and the global triple crisis of biodiversity loss, climate crisis and environmental pollution. In the Berlin Roadmap, we agreed on a work plan for a more gentle approach to resources.
Based on this, we want to adopt principles for businesses in Japan. These principles should support companies in conserving resources and implementing the principle of a circular economy in their corporate policies – because it is the companies that can actually do something practical against resource waste, for example, through sustainable supply chains or durable product design.
I want to anchor resource conservation and a circular economy wherever it comes to addressing the major environmental crises: at climate conferences, world nature conferences and the implementation of Agenda 2030. For example, Germany initiated cooperation between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Resource Panel (IRP) at the last UN Climate Conference. We will consistently continue on this path.
The Federal Ministry for the Environment is currently developing a national circular economy strategy for Germany. The strategy creates a new framework for using resources sparingly and replacing them with recycled materials. Details will be discussed and developed from April onwards in intensive exchange with other ministries and experts from business, science and civil society.
To combat the climate crisis, extinction of species, and environmental pollution, we should use all our options. Resource consumption is inseparably linked to all these crises. Resource conservation and a circular economy are, therefore, indispensable parts of their solution.
Last week, a court in Luxembourg overturned the national ban on the active ingredient glyphosate. Across the EU, glyphosate is thus still permitted until at least December 15, 2023. Timo Landenberger analyzes how the use of the herbicide affects the earth’s microorganisms and what the chances are for an EU-wide ban on glyphosate.
The development of artificial intelligence has obviously picked up speed in recent months. The negotiators in the European Parliament must find a way to adequately regulate offerings such as ChatGPT. They reject a moratorium, as demanded by Tesla founder Elon Musk, among others. Corinna Visser asked the rapporteurs in the European Parliament.
The G7 environment ministers are meeting in Japan this weekend. Germany is focusing on resource conservation and the circular economy. German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) wants to put companies in the driver’s seat. They can “do something practical against resource waste through sustainable supply chains or durable product design,” Lemke writes in a position paper for Table.Media.
Josep Borrell, on the other hand, will have to stay at home. The EU foreign affairs representative had actually planned to arrive in Beijing today. But he has canceled his trip because of a Covid infection. He had tested positive for Covid-19 and thus had to postpone the trip, Borrell wrote on Twitter. He is doing well and has no symptoms.
After the Luxembourg Administrative Court overturned the national ban on the herbicide glyphosate, the debate about the controversial active ingredient is also gaining momentum again at the EU level. Especially since the reduction of chemical pesticides under the Pesticides Regulation is currently one of the most controversial goals of European environmental and agricultural policy.
Luxembourg was the first EU member to adopt a national ban on glyphosate in January 2021. Bayer, the chemical company and glyphosate manufacturer, filed a lawsuit against the ban, and has now been upheld by the court of second instance. As long as the active ingredient is permitted at the EU level, there is no reason for a national go-it-alone, the court said in its reasoning. According to the court, glyphosate poses “no unacceptable risks to public and animal health.”
Norbert Fraeyman, a toxicologist at Ghent University, sees things differently. The question of the active ingredient’s harmfulness is too limited to carcinogenicity. Glyphosate is indeed carcinogenic, but the factor is actually many times lower than smoking, for example, and on about the same level as meat consumption. Much more important, but hardly recognized, are the negative effects on the microbiome and thus on the central nervous system. This not only has health consequences for humans but threatens numerous insect and bird species.
In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic,” setting off a heated debate. Nevertheless, it is now the most widely used herbicide in the world, and that is precisely the main problem, Fraeyman said. As a result of its overuse, many weeds have developed resistance to the active ingredient, leading to even greater use in agriculture.
“Glyphosate must be banned in the agricultural sector,” the scientist demands. “And not just because it’s carcinogenic, but because of its extremely high overall toxic profile and the effort that would be required to contain its effects.”
An EU-wide ban on glyphosate was on the agenda in Brussels for the first time in 2017. A corresponding citizens’ initiative reached over one million signatures. However, some organizations, including the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), concluded the active ingredient was safe. The approval was thus granted for a further five years, also with the consent of the German government.
In December 2022, the EU Commission extended the approval by another year until mid-December after a long dispute with the member states. The official reason: the review process for renewed approval by EFSA had not yet been completed. A corresponding result is expected in July, with a vote in the fall.
Whether there will then be an EU-wide ban on glyphosate is difficult to judge at present, says Sarah Wiener (Greens), a member of the European Parliament. She said there is no majority trend foreseeable among the member states. “If the ban doesn’t come this year, it will definitely come later,” she said. The research is clear, risk and damage to biodiversity and health have become unacceptable, says the agricultural politician and calls on the Commission to observe the precautionary principle.
“Europe has the most stringent approval system for crop protection products in the world,” counters industry association Agrar. Crop protection products approved in Europe are safe and urgently needed for yield and quality assurance.
Nevertheless, agriculture is prepared to reduce use even further, says Bernhard Krüsken, Secretary General of the German Farmers’ Association. However, this can only work through technical and voluntary solutions, not through bans, which always lead to consequences in cultivation.
“In this case, the only alternative is to increase the use of the plow again. This, in turn, requires much more energy and thus leads to a significant increase in carbon emissions. The ban on this active ingredient is therefore counterproductive against the backdrop of climate change,” says Krüsken.
The German government nevertheless intends to stick to its banning plans and remove glyphosate from the market by the end of 2023 in accordance with the coalition agreement. “Should the approval be extended at the EU level, we will examine further steps for a national ban on its use,” said a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Ministry.
Strict rules on the use of glyphosate have already been in place in Germany since the amendment of the Plant Protection Regulation in the fall of 2021. For example, the herbicide may only be used in agriculture if other measures cannot be implemented. Its use is already banned in gardens or parks.
Negotiators dealing with the AI Act in the European Parliament are rejecting a moratorium on AI development. Elon Musk and other celebrities called for a six-month pause in AI development in an open letter. This was prompted by the rapid development of large-scale language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT.
However, the reporters still want to include general-purpose AI (GPAI) or, more precisely, powerful basic models, which include ChatGPT, in the AI Act. However, if the vote in the committees (IMCO and LIBE) is to take place on April 26, as planned, there is little time to reach an agreement.
“I don’t think much of a moratorium because it would mean ignoring reality,” says Axel Voss, shadow rapporteur for the EPP. If development in the West stops now, it will continue in the East. That is why we cannot simply bury our heads in the sand. “We also need to pull ourselves together more as legislators and simply act faster, or at least set a direction for AI development,” Voss says. “A break is not going to work.”
For once, Sergey Lagodinsky, shadow rapporteur for the Greens/EFA, agrees with him. Lagodinsky considers the calls for a moratorium populist and sees no reason to follow it. “We want to regulate AI and regulate it in such a way that we can also follow up, should that be necessary.”
But regarding the regulation of GPAI, for example, there is a difficulty. Actually, general-purpose AI does not fit into the system of the Act, and the Commission had not included it in its proposal. That is because the AI Act takes a risk-based approach.
Particularly harmful AI practices that violate the Union’s values are prohibited. Applications of AI systems that pose high risks to fundamental rights and security are allowed but are subject to regulation. Only transparency obligations apply to other AI systems that do not pose a high risk. Thus, obligations are related to the use case, but GPAI is not reduced to any specific application by definition.
How the rapporteurs Brando Benifei (S&D) and Dragoş Tudorache (Renew) now want to incorporate powerful basic models into regulation is still open. “We will propose a set of rules,” is the word from the environment. What those will be, even the shadow rapporteurs do not know yet.
The Greens, Lagodinsky says, wanted GPAI included in the regulation initially. “The rapporteurs and other groups didn’t want to address it at all – until ChatGPT came along,” he recalls. His original proposal was to treat basic models that are understandably and predictably used in high-risk applications as high-risk technology. “I would like to emphasize again, that high-risk is not about prohibition, but about transparency and documentation requirements,” Lagodinsky says. These are often confused, he adds.
Creating a separate category in the regulation for GPAI, as often called for in the public debate, is considered excessive by Voss. “Of course, we can talk about the danger of ChatGPT,” says Voss. Voss has formulated his questions to the developer OpenAI in an open letter.
But when it comes to legislation, he said, Parliament cannot leave to chance what was published at the time and what thus does or does not make it into law. “But what we determine must apply generally.”
Experts would have to decide whether ChatGPT is a high-risk AI or not. “We’re just providing the framework for developers to follow,” Voss says. “We’re not going to take on every single application, which I think is already problematic with facial recognition.”
GPAI is about achieving fair burden sharing. If the base model is not yet a high-risk application, it is possible to build a high-risk application on top of it, he said. “The operators then need the information from the developer of the base model to meet the requirements from the AI Act.”
But general-purpose AI is not the only point of open discussion. “I still see a lot of open construction sites,” Lagodinsky says. On the agenda for this Thursday’s Shadows meeting are:
Two more meetings of the shadow rapporteurs are scheduled for next week. The negotiations – also on general-purpose AI – must then be concluded to stay on schedule.
“Personally, I’m very optimistic about progress and innovation,” Lagodinsky explains. The point, he says, is precisely not to ban the use of AI. “We should look more closely at the direction in which developments are going and remain responsive to further develop and adapt the law in the future.” This is certainly possible, he said, for example, through the classification of high-risk systems in the annex. The annex, which the Commission can add to, opens a “window for executive flexibility,” he said.
Here, too, Voss expresses a similar view: “With digital developments, we need rather breathing documents with a certain flexibility, where problem reduction should also take place in between.” He also thinks legislators should not always think in terms of regulation but perhaps also in terms of guidelines. These, too, could be secured by Parliament, he adds. “There should be no lack of legitimacy,” Voss says. “But we are too slow in the way we have handled things so far.”
Voss also already has a proposal for the coming legislature: “We need to think about how to combine all of these governance requirements from AI, data protection, DSA, and DMA, from data governance and the Data Act,” Voss demands. Looking at everything in isolation would not make sense, he says. “We need a horizontal approach to define what works and what doesn’t.”
When it comes to environmental protection, many people first think of clean rivers, blooming meadows, and nature reserves. When it comes to climate action, wind farms, EVs, and heat pumps come to mind. Undoubtedly, renewable energies and nature conservation are central building blocks for making our country climate-neutral and preserving natural living conditions. However, another building block is often forgotten: the many things that are manufactured, sold, and consumed every day.
Valuable resources are consumed wherever something is produced, whether it’s sneakers, cell phones, or single-family homes. And it is increasing every year. Between 1970 and 2017, the consumption of natural resources worldwide tripled. Without appropriate measures, it would double again by 2060.
Raw materials for goods must be mined, pumped from the ground, and in many cases, separated from rock or processed with chemicals. They must be transported, further processed and packaged – all with high energy consumption and CO2 emissions and sometimes massive burdens on soils, waters, flora and fauna. According to calculations by the International Resource Panel (IRP), at least half of all greenhouse gas emissions and about 90 percent of biodiversity loss and global water problems are due to the extraction and processing of resources.
If we want to make our economy climate-neutral and environmentally friendly, resource conservation is the sleeping giant. It needs to be awakened.
The goal must be to consume significantly fewer primary raw materials – i.e., raw materials that enter the economic cycle anew – and to close material cycles. This has been agreed by the federal government in the coalition agreement. Nature sets an example for us; it is a single cycle: Leaves fall to the ground in a forest. Insects, fungi and microorganisms decompose them, forming valuable humus that nourishes trees and plants.
Nature should be a model for us. Raw materials that are already in circulation must be given a second, third, and fourth life as secondary raw materials. This goes far beyond recycling. Products must be designed from the beginning to be durable, easy to repair and disassemble, and their components recyclable. Only then does the circle close to a circular economy that ends resource waste. In times of scarce and expensive raw materials, we also secure the resilience and competitiveness of our economy.
As Minister of the Environment, I am committed to placing even greater emphasis on resource protection in addressing global environmental crises.
To this end, I would like to use the upcoming meeting of G7 environment ministers on April 15 and 16 in Japan. The major industrialized nations are also major consumers of resources and therefore bear a special responsibility. Last year, under German presidency, the G7 countries recognized the connection between resource consumption and the global triple crisis of biodiversity loss, climate crisis and environmental pollution. In the Berlin Roadmap, we agreed on a work plan for a more gentle approach to resources.
Based on this, we want to adopt principles for businesses in Japan. These principles should support companies in conserving resources and implementing the principle of a circular economy in their corporate policies – because it is the companies that can actually do something practical against resource waste, for example, through sustainable supply chains or durable product design.
I want to anchor resource conservation and a circular economy wherever it comes to addressing the major environmental crises: at climate conferences, world nature conferences and the implementation of Agenda 2030. For example, Germany initiated cooperation between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Resource Panel (IRP) at the last UN Climate Conference. We will consistently continue on this path.
The Federal Ministry for the Environment is currently developing a national circular economy strategy for Germany. The strategy creates a new framework for using resources sparingly and replacing them with recycled materials. Details will be discussed and developed from April onwards in intensive exchange with other ministries and experts from business, science and civil society.
To combat the climate crisis, extinction of species, and environmental pollution, we should use all our options. Resource consumption is inseparably linked to all these crises. Resource conservation and a circular economy are, therefore, indispensable parts of their solution.
