German’s environment ministry is calling for a binding date of 2020 to begin phasing out the herbicide active ingredient glyphosate. The chemical cannot be completely banned before December 2022, when the European Commission’s Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed is next set to vote on extending its registration. Member states can restrict it, however.

Speaking in Berlin, environment minister Svenja Schulze, a Social Democrat, said glyphosate’s use should first be restricted to areas where it could not easily run off and contaminate water supplies and, once phased out, should not be replaced with similar substances. Schulze’s plans foresee farmers being required to leave 10% of their land pesticide-free.

For Germany to initiate any moves toward restricting glyphosate it would require modifying the approval process for pesticides and, in Schulze’s view, creating protected areas free from pest control chemicals. To make this happen, the German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA) would need to send recommendations to the agriculture ministry into whose jurisdiction crop protection agents fall.

According to German news reports, agriculture minister Julia Klöckner has been cool to the idea of restricting the chemical before the end of 2022, noting that the EU in 2017 voted for a five-year extension of the registration and it is yet too early.

In April of this year, Klöckner issued recommendations for curbing the use of herbicides generally. Under the terms, private individuals are no longer allowed to spray glyphosate and farmers may do so under certain conditions. Over the past five years, the use of glyphosate has been reduced by third, the Christian Democrat said.

Ironically, last December’s deciding vote in favor of the EU’s five-year reprieve for the controversial herbicide agent was cast by Germany. Although then-environment minister Barbara Hendricks, a Social Democrat, opposed the extension, agriculture minister Christian Schmidt, a member of the Christian Social Party, gave the thumbs up at the Standing Committee’s meeting in Brussels.

Up to and at the Brussels meeting, France fought to either cancel glyphosate’s registration or restrict the renewal to only three years. French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to phase out the chemical up to 2020. Some farmers are critical of the plans, however.

In the past, Germany’s environment agency has been critical of glyphosate, saying that destroys all plants and consequently sources of food and the natural environments of many species of insects and birds. Unsurprisingly, Bayer, now the world’s largest agrochemical group, takes the opposite view.

In Germany, the debate over glyphosate is shaped by political interests rather than being based on sound scientific evidence, Bayer asserts. The Leverkusen-based group, which this past summer acquired the former agrochemicals market leader Monsanto, is currently facing a reported 8,000 lawsuits from people who say its use caused their cancer.