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Regulatory failure means potentially unsafe pesticides are coming to market in Europe, a group of scientists have warned in a peer reviewed paper that uses the case of glyphosate to reveal “systemic” abuses in implementing EU law.

“The large market value of this product (projected to reach US$9.91bn by 2022) was without doubt an incentive for exploiting the available weaknesses of the system, but the same causes may produce the same results for other pesticides,” they wrote in a paper published in the European Journal of Risk Regulation.

Government delegates voted in late 2017 to extend EU authorisation for the near ubiquitous herbicide by five years, despite a petition signed by 1.3 million people and controversy over the alleged practices of US agrochemical firm Monsanto. Germany’s Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, is one of eight firms that applied last December as the ‘glyphosate renewal group’ for a further extension beyond 2022. The application will be assessed by France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden.