The European Citizens’ Initiative to ban Glyphosate kicked off in early February 2017, after mounting public concern about the hazardousness of the world’s most-used weedkiller, Roundup Ready, since the World Health Organization published a study where it linked Glyphosate to cancer in 2015. WeMove.eu - together with PAN-Europe and other civil society organizations, as well as campaigners and activists - launched this ECI to ban Glyphosate, to reform the EU pesticides approval process, and to set mandatory targets to reduce pesticide use in the EU.

 The ECI’s aim was to reach one million European citizens’ signatures and submit the petition to the European Commission before the latter’s next move to renew, remove or extend Glyphosate’s EU license.

 While it reached the one million signatures threshold on June 15th, the ECI remained open until June 30th; the million has been amply surpassed, having officially reached a total of 1,322,405 signatures which were handed to Member States on July 3rd!

 On May 19th, the Stop Glyphosate coalition sent a joint open letter to EU Commission’s First Vice-President, Frans Timmermans, to state the ECI’s intended goals and to arrange for its official delivery to the Commission. Mr Timmermans has invited the ECI coalition to meet with him, in early October 2017, once the bureaucratic delivery procedure is completed.