Request for a preliminary ruling from the Tribunal correctionnel de Foix (France) lodged on 26 October 2017 — Procureur de la République v Mathieu Blaise and Others
(Case C-616/17)
Language of the case: French
Referring court
Tribunal correctionnel de Foix
Parties to the main proceedings
Applicant: Procureur de la République
Defendants: Mathieu Blaise, Sabrina Dauzet, Alain Feliu, Marie Foray, Sylvestre Ganter, Dominique Masset, Ambroise Monsarrat, Sandrine Muscat, Jean-Charles Sutra, Blanche Yon, Kevin Leo-Pol Fred Perrin, Germain Yves Dedieu, Olivier Godard, Kevin Pao Donovan Schachner, Laura Dominique Chantal Escande, Nicolas Benoit Rey, Eric Malek Benromdan, Olivier Eric Labrunie, Simon Joseph Jeremie Boucard, Alexis Ganter, Pierre André Garcia
Other party: Espace Émeraude
Questions referred
Is Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 October 2009 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market and repealing Council Directives 79/117/EEC and 91/414/EEC 1 compatible with the precautionary principle when it provides no specific definition of an active substance, leaving it to the applicant to determine what it designates as the active substance in its product and granting it scope to focus its whole application dossier on a single substance, while its end product placed on the market is made up of several substances?
Is the precautionary principle observed and the impartiality of the authorisation to place products on the market maintained when the tests, analyses and evaluations necessary for compilation of the dossier are conducted by the applicants alone, who may be biased in their presentation, without any independent counter-analysis or publication of the application reports on the pretext of protecting industrial secrecy?
Is Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 compatible with the precautionary principle when it takes no account of there being multiple active substances or of their cumulative use, in particular when it makes no provision for any comprehensive specific analysis at European level of cumulation of active substances within a single product?
Is Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 compatible with the precautionary principle when, in Chapters III and IV, it exempts from toxicity tests (genotoxicity, carcinogenicity assessment, assessment of endocrine disruptors, etc.) pesticide products in the commercial formulations in which they are placed on the market and in which consumers and the environment are exposed to them, requiring only summary testing, which is anyway performed by the applicant itself?
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1 OJ 2009 L 309, p. 1.