Brussels, 5 October 2017 – The European Parliament showed a red card to the European Commission for proposing flawed identification criteria for endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).

In a historic moment, a majority of Members of European Parliament (MEPs) voted against the Commission’s proposal, by supporting a motion for objection that was adopted by the European Parliament’s environment committee earlier last week [1].

Just prior to the vote, signatures from over 315.000 Europeans urging MEPs to reject the Commission’s proposal and to stand up for health were handed over in a massive online action by EDC-Free Europe campaign partners and SumofUs.

MEPs found that the Commission exceeded its given mandate that tasked it to propose science-based criteria, by introducing a problematic exemption for certain endocrine disrupting pesticides that was not based on science and by doing so outside of the ordinary legislative procedure.

The EDC-Free Europe coalition repeatedly warned that the proposed criteria were not sufficient to protect human health and the environment, not grounded in science, and unlawful. We now call on the European Commission to come up with a new proposal that lives up to citizens’ expectations.

EDC-Free Europe campaign partners across Europe welcomed the European Parliament’s vote on the EDC criteria: