Save Bees and Farmers

To protect bees and people’s health, we call on the Commission to propose legal acts to phase out synthetic pesticides by 2035, to restore biodiversity, and to support farmers in the transition.

• Phase out synthetic pesticides in EU agriculture by 80% by 2030, starting with the most hazardous, to become free of synthetic by 2035;
• restore natural ecosystems in agricultural areas so that farming becomes a vector of biodiversity recovery;
• reform agriculture by prioritising small scale, diverse and sustainable farming, supporting a rapid increase in agro-ecological and organic practice, and enabling independent farmer-based training and research into pesticide- and GMO-free farming.

Your information is firstly encrypted (so no one can access it) and is stored temporarily on a secure server. At the end of the campaign, the signatures are then handed over to the officials in your country who will officially verify the signatures.

WeMove Europe is legally prohibited from store or use the extra information you supply for any purpose other than relating to the European Citizens’ Initiative you have supplied it for. Once the ECI has ended, the ECI organisers will destroy all the extra information supplied for the purposes of this ECI. The organisers’ ability to perform these tasks securely has been certified according to the requirements of the European Union.

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A European Citizens' Initiative is a special way that ordinary European citizens like us can demand the European Commission investigates whether there should be a change in the law in Europe. It is different to a regular petition because this tool legally obliges the European Commission to consider and investigate our demands as citizens. So it gives us more bargaining power.

To be considered successful, a European Citizens’ Initiative needs to reach over 1 million valid signatures throughout the European Union. In addition to that, a minimum number of signatures must be reached in at least seven member states.

ECIs can only be on a topic or policy that the European Commission has the power to legislate on.

To support a European Citizens' Initiative, you must be an EU citizen (national of an EU member state) and be old enough to vote in European Parliament elections (18, except in Greece where the voting age is 17, and except Austria and Malta where the voting age is 16).

To see more information on exactly who is eligible please visit the website of the ECI from the European Commission.

Bees are dying out. Big pesticide producers like Bayer-Monsanto will do anything to increase their sales and bottom-line, and they are forcing the hands of farmers. The only way for farmers to succeed in this intensive, industrial agriculture system is to use pesticides that kill the bees.

We need the bees because they pollinate one-third of the food we eat. Pollination is essential to our lives because our fruits, vegetables, and the crops that feed livestock require pollination to be fertilised. Without bees there would literally be no food! [1]

We’re asking for all pesticides to be phased out. It’s a big ask, but if more than ONE MILLION of us sign, the EU Commission and our MEPs will be legally obligated to meet us and address our demands. There’s already big momentum on pesticides -- glyphosate will soon be re-evaluated by the EU and more and more citizens are calling to protect the bees. [2]

It’s clear our politicians are starting to listen. Following calls from millions of Europeans in 2018, the EU agreed to a near-total ban on neonicotinoids, a specific kind of pesticide that harms the central nervous systems of bees. [3] And just last October, the EU decided that it will not renew the license for another pesticide. [4] And all of this on the back of a new law that the EU approved last year, increasing transparency throughout the pesticide approval process! [5]

But we can’t just keep banning individual types of pesticides! Our public resources ought to fund research to allow agriculture to prosper and bees to thrive, while also rebuilding our dying ecosystems. And to do that, we need to phase out synthetic pesticides altogether.

Because this campaign is a European Citizens’ Initiative, you’ll have to enter your details in a two-step process. The ECI is like an official EU petition, so it requires more information than we’d normally ask from you to sign a petition. Please fully complete the ECI form in order to have your signature counted and verified by your national government.

References:
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/bee-decline-dying-out-honeybees-uk-food-production-extinction-a6939266.html
[2] In 2017, our community launched an ECI to ban glyphosate with a large coalition of partners across Europe. While we didn’t get an EU-wide ban on glyphosate, we won major changes to the EU transparency of the pesticide approval procedure which were passed into law earlier this year. For more information about ECIs, see the EU website here: https://ec.europa.eu/citizens-initiative/public/welcome
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43910536
[4] In October 2019 the EU agreed to not renew the license for thiacloprid -- another bee-harming neonicotinoid pesticide: https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-will-not-renew-authorisation-of-bee-killer-substance-thiacloprid/
[5] https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/choir-of-approval-over-new-eu-food-safety-transparency-rules/