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

Prospective environmental risk assessment (ERA) is central to regulatory decision-making for plant protection products (PPPs) in the European Union (EU). Although the current framework is generally considered procedurally mature and harmonised, concerns remain about its efficiency, growing complexity, and capacity to reflect real-world environmental conditions. To explore these issues, this policy brief draws on a survey of regulatory practitioners across Europe and follow-up workshops organised under PARC in collaboration with PollinERA and SYBERAC. The survey collected responses from 114 practitioners, predominantly regulatory risk assessors, from 31 regulatory organisations across 25 European countries and all three EU PPP regulatory zones. Respondents generally considered PPP ERA effective in meeting formal regulatory requirements but expressed only moderate confidence in its ability to predict and manage environmental impacts of PPP use under real-world environmental conditions. They attached high importance to the scientific quality and societal relevance of their work, while identifying limitations in the ecological realism of current approaches. Practitioners also highlighted procedural complexity, the interpretative demands of guidance, fragmented data systems, limited opportunities to reuse information across dossiers, and increasing workload pressures as major constraints on assessment efficiency. Collaboration was viewed 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 PPP ERA system that is procedurally robust but increasingly challenged by operational complexity. Practitioners reported devoting growing effort to navigating guidance, managing fragmented information, re-assessing information, and conducting increasingly complex assessments, raising questions about whether greater complexity translates into better regulatory predictions or decisions. The findings point to the need for clearer ERA objectives and operational protection goals, stronger cross-organisational collaboration, and more proportionate, problem-driven assessment approaches. Together, these changes could enhance ecological realism, efficiency, and regulatory credibility while maintaining scientific rigour and legal robustness.