- Austria is the first country in the European Union to ban Glyphosate (European Union). The measure has been adopted on the initiative of the Social Democratic Party, and has been supported by the ultra-right FPÖ Party, the Liberals and the progressive Jetz, who have announced their approval.
The ban on the use of glyphosate in Austria has been adopted by a separate Parliament and unanimously. According to the newspaper Público, the popular party ÖVP, which voted against the measure, called the ban populist and defined it as an attack on farmers who use glyphosate "correctly". The international environmental organization Greenpeace, for its part, has described this fact as "Historic" and has valued the consensus reached by the parties.
The measure runs counter to the European Union Plant Protection Ordinance, which allows the use of glyphosate in all Member States until 2022. Community states may prohibit some substances from the ordinance in extreme cases. It is now up to the European Commission to decide whether or not this ban should apply.
Condemned for the use of glyphosate
The German multinational pharmaceutical and agrochemical company, Bayer, has been penalised three times for the use and sale of glyphosate. The last was last May, when a U.S. court ruled that Roundup of Monsanto had caused the cancer of a pair of herbicides. The company Bayer was sentenced to the maximum penalty, as it had to compensate the couple with EUR 1.8 billion for moral damage.
The two previous penalties have been resolved for damage to a gardener in San Francisco (California, USA).