I refer to the article of January 16 titled ‘EU’s permission to ban glyphosate is not needed’.

The Ministry for Sustainable Development, the Environment and Climate Change would like to clarify the following.

We refer to the DOI press releases of May 24, 2016 and June 6, 2016 whereby the public was informed that the government will be voting against the renewal of the licensing of glyphosate at EU level.

The government had then made it clear that it was awaiting the decision from the EU to start the process to ban glyphosate. Once a decision was taken by the EU, Malta revoked with immediate effect products which contain both the active substance glyphosate and the co-formulant POE-tallow amine.

By way of clarification the active substances such as glyphosate are approved at EU level and the individual plant protection products such as Round Up are authorised at member state level. An authorisation of the product can only be refused if the product does not satisfy the criteria established within the law. Therefore, in view of internal market rules, a product cannot be banned if it satisfies the criteria.

Moreover, we specify once again that the product which is mentioned in the article, Round Up, is one of the products in the process of being banned.