The EU is banning the outdoor use of pesticides which have been proven harmful to bees. The ban was passed today for all outdoor crops, limiting their use to permanent greenhouses where contact with bees is unlikely, said the European Commission in a press release on Friday.

This ban goes beyond the earlier EU policy, in place since 2013, which banned the use of these pesticides only for certain crops.

The substances in question are known as neonicotinoids (more specifically clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiametoxam). Research published by the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) in February this year has proven that their use represents a risk to both wild bees and honeybees.

“Bees and other pollinators play an important role in the maintenance of biodiversity and food production, and they must be protected,” said the Croatian MEP, Davor Škrlec, adding that this ban was an important step in battling the fall of the bee populations across Europe.

In spring 2015, the EU published a Red List of Bees, marking them as an endangered species in Europe, which prompted calls for appropriate conservation action.

Many pollinator populations are in decline, and, while the existing data is not sufficient to fully understand the reasons behind the decline, research has showed they can be caused by the changes in environmental conditions, one of which is pesticide use.

With a composition similar to nicotine, found in cigarettes, neonicotinoids can cause a kind of addiction in bees, leading them to search out the crops treated with the substance. They cause anomalies in the bees’ behaviour, negatively affecting their sense of direction and the ability to care for their young, which results in empty beehives with the larvae starving to death.

The new regulation will be adopted by the European Commission in the coming weeks, and become applicable by the end of the year.

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