Summary
Details
- European Union
The SUR was a proposed environmental and agricultural policy at EU level but is not currently in force, as the proposal was withdrawn by the European Commission in February 2024.
Criteria:
Applied in draft form to all professional users of plant-protection products in the EU, including farmers, growers, contractors and distributors, as well as to Member State authorities designing national pesticide-reduction targets and National Action Plans.
Also applied to sensitive areas such as urban green spaces and protected nature areas, where pesticide use would have been heavily restricted or banned.
Exemptions and Flexibility:
Not every farm would have faced identical reduction paths, but any user wishing to apply pesticides would have had to comply with integrated pest management and national reduction targets (so non-compliance would have led to penalties or loss of subsidies under the CAP in the adopted version).
Member States would have had flexibility in setting national reduction trajectories and implementing IPM measures, provided they achieved the overall EU objectives for a 50 % reduction in pesticide use and risk by 2030.
Since the proposal was withdrawn, these obligations and flexibilities remain theoretical and do not apply in practice; existing obligations continue to derive from Directive 2009/128/EC and national law.
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What’s Required
Because SUR was withdrawn, there are no direct obligations under SUR itself. Instead:
Current applicable law remains Directive 2009/128/EC (SUD) and its national transposition, plus Regulation (EC) 1107/2009 on placing plant-protection products on the market.
Farmers, distributors, and professional users must continue to comply with:
National Action Plans (NAPs) on sustainable pesticide use
training, equipment inspection, storage, and handling rules
existing IPM obligations under SUD (though often weakly enforced).
Important Deadlines
SUR has no implementation deadlines because it was withdrawn before adoption.
Existing SUD-related obligations and NAP timelines continue to apply under national law.
Current Status
Legal status of SUR:
Proposal withdrawn by the European Commission on 6 February 2024; it is not in force and has no binding effect.
Policy reality:
The EU still has political goals to reduce pesticide use and risk, but there is no EU-wide binding 50 % target in force.
Existing SUD obligations continue, but many analysts highlight “limited progress” in actually reducing pesticide risks.
Penalties for Non-Compliance
Since SUR has not entered into force, there are no penalties under SUR.
Penalties for pesticide-related non-compliance are currently based on:
national laws implementing Directive 2009/128/EC
rules under Regulation (EC) 1107/2009 for authorisation and misuse of plant-protection products.
Penalties typically include fines, withdrawal of authorisations, restrictions on use, and potential criminal sanctions in serious cases – but these derive from existing frameworks, not SUR.
Examples of Known Violations
There are no violations under SUR, because it never became law.
However, the European Court of Auditors and other reports have repeatedly flagged limited enforcement and incomplete implementation of the earlier SUD directive, noting inadequate inspection and patchy monitoring of pesticide-risk reduction.
As of November 2025, we were not able to find any specific examples of penalties imposed with regard to the violation of the SUR proposal, since it did not reach the enforcement stage.
Resources
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52022PC0305
https://food.ec.europa.eu/plants/pesticides/sustainable-use-pesticides_en
https://agrinfo.eu/book-of-reports/sustainable-use-of-pesticides-regulation/
https://www.agroecology-europe.org/joint-statement-the-eu-must-make-pesticide-reduction-a-reality/
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