EU pesticide risk assessors report confidence in compliance but doubt real-world predictions

Prospective environmental risk assessment sits at the heart of regulatory decision-making for plant protection products in the European Union, and a new policy brief offers an unusually direct look at how the people who run that system view its performance. The brief, published in Environmental Sciences Europe, draws on a survey of regulatory practitioners across Europe together with follow-up workshops organised under the Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC), in collaboration with the PollinERA and SYBERAC projects. The survey collected responses from 114 practitioners, predominantly regulatory risk assessors, drawn from 31 regulatory organisations across 25 European countries and all three EU regulatory zones for plant protection products.

The headline finding is a split verdict. Respondents generally considered the environmental risk assessment of plant protection products effective in meeting formal regulatory requirements, yet they expressed only moderate confidence in its ability to predict and manage the environmental impacts of pesticide use under real-world environmental conditions. The practitioners attached high importance to the scientific quality and societal relevance of their work, but they identified limitations in the ecological realism of current assessment approaches. In other words, the framework is seen as procedurally mature and harmonised, matching the authors’ description of the current system, while its capacity to reflect actual environmental conditions remains a persistent concern.

Efficiency emerged as a second major theme. Respondents highlighted procedural complexity, the interpretative demands of guidance documents, fragmented data systems, limited opportunities to reuse information across dossiers, and increasing workload pressures as major constraints on assessment efficiency. The survey also found that practitioners reported devoting growing effort to navigating guidance, managing fragmented information, re-assessing information, and conducting increasingly complex assessments. The authors frame this as raising questions about whether greater complexity actually translates into better regulatory predictions or decisions, a point that goes to the core of how the system’s expanding analytical burden should be judged.

Collaboration was viewed by respondents as essential for quality assurance, uncertainty management, and harmonisation. However, while collaboration was generally well established within organisations, it was reported to be less systematically embedded across organisations and Member States, limiting opportunities for harmonised interpretation, knowledge exchange, and collective learning. Taken together, the findings portray a plant protection product risk assessment system that the authors describe as procedurally robust but increasingly challenged by operational complexity. The brief concludes that the findings point to the need for clearer risk assessment objectives and operational protection goals, stronger cross-organisational collaboration, and more proportionate, problem-driven assessment approaches, which could enhance ecological realism, efficiency, and regulatory credibility while maintaining scientific rigour and legal robustness.

Subject of Research: Practitioners' views on EU environmental risk assessment of plant protection products

Article Title: Practitioners’ perspectives on EU environmental risk assessment for plant protection products

Article References: Williams, J. H., Devos, Y., Aldrich, A., Christensen, K., Duquesne, S., Mazerolles, V., Mølgaard, N., & Axelman, J. (2026). Practitioners’ perspectives on EU environmental risk assessment for plant protection products. Environmental Sciences Europe. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12302-026-01538-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12302-026-01538-x

Keywords: environmental risk assessment, plant protection products, pesticides, EU regulation, regulatory practitioners, PARC, ecological realism, policy brief, risk assessors, survey, Practitioners, perspectives