Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union

E1: Agriculture and fisheries

European Commission, Eurostat

L-2920, LUXEMBOURG

The data set comprises the annual sales of active substances contained in plant protection products (equivalent to the term ‘pesticides’ in this metadata file) placed on the market from reference year 2011 onwards, according to Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 as amended by Commission Regulation (EU) 2021/2010 of 17 November 2021 as regards the list of active substances. The data shall cover all active substances in all plant protection products placed on the market in the Member States during the reference period, including those that are placed on the market under a parallel trade permit and/or under emergency authorisations. Data on sales of plant production products cover both agricultural and non-agricultural uses. Data exclude quantities of sales for biocides, safeners, synergists, basic substances and adjuvants.

This data collection is mandatory for all EU Member States, Iceland and Norway, and optional for other EFTA countries as well as for candidate and potential candidate countries.

Eurostat disseminates the total sales of active substances, and the highest aggregation level, also called major groups in the Harmonised classification of substances. They are the following:

• F – Fungicides and bactericides;
• H – Herbicides, haulm destructors and moss killers;
• I – Insecticides and acaricides;
• M – Molluscicides;
• PGR – Plant growth regulators; and
• ZR – Other plant protection products.

The data are also presented on disaggregated levels to provide more details. The second aggregation level is categories of products (e.g. F01 – Inorganic fungicides, F02 – Fungicides based on carbamates and dithiocarbamates, etc.). The third is chemical classes (e.g. F01_01 – Copper compounds, F01_02 – Inorganic sulphur, etc.). To date, these data are not yet disseminated for all reference years and countries. 

The disseminated data for total sales, major groups, categories of products and chemical classes exclude quantities of micro-biological substances (substances referring to codes F06 and I05) because of the difficulties to convert colony-forming unit (CFU) into kilogram (kg), the unit of dissemination. For more information about the reason of excluding micro-biological substances see ’11.2. Quality management - assessment’.

The voluntary variables linked to professional uses (PPM_PU, PPM_PU_AGR, PPM_PU_FOR, PPM_PU_OTH, PPM_PU_ST) include micro-biological substances.

The classification of the active substances in plant protection products is annexed (Annex III) to Commission Regulation (EU) 2021/2010 of 17 November 2021 amending Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning statistics on pesticides.

The active substances are classified according to chemical and functional similarity. Aggregation levels in descending order comprise: major groups, categories of products, chemical classes and active substances. The list of substances is revised on a regular basis and at least every five years. 

The revisions are elaborated with the expert input of the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE). The code lists of active substances and their aggregation levels collected each year are annexed at the end of this page.

The geographical classification for country codes (ISO 3166) is applied.

The statistics cover active substances in plant protection products placed on the market in the reporting countries, and irrespective of their final use destination (agricultural use or non-agricultural use).

This data collection comprises pesticide sales data in EU Member States, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Montenegro, Turkey and the United Kingdom, based on the concept ‘placing on the market’ as defined in 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. The scope of the Regulation covers plant protection products and their active substances:

• Plant protection products: products consisting of or containing active substances, safeners or synergists, and intended for one of the following uses: protecting plants or plant products against all harmful organisms or preventing the action of such organisms, unless the main purpose of these products is considered to be for reasons of hygiene rather than for the protection of plants or plant products; influencing the life processes of plants, such as substances influencing their growth, other than as a nutrient or a plant biostimulant; preserving plant products, in so far as such substances or products are not subject to special Community provisions on preservatives; destroying undesired plants or parts of plants, except algae unless the products are applied on soil or water to protect plants; checking or preventing undesired growth of plants, except algae unless the products are applied on soil or water to protect plants.
• Active substances: substances, including micro-organisms having general or specific action against harmful organisms or on plants, parts of plants or plant products.

Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishes a common framework for the systematic production of Community statistics on the placing on the market and agricultural use of those pesticides which are plant protection products as defined in Article 2 (a)(i).

The statistics shall apply to the annual amounts of pesticides active substances placed on the market in accordance with Annex I and the quantity of active substances shall be aggregated according to the list in Annex III (as amended).

Active substances.

Plant protection products.

EU Member States, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Montenegro, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Reference year 2011 onwards for EU Member States (excluding Croatia), Norway and Switzerland; reference year 2013 onwards for Croatia; reference year 2015 onwards for Iceland; reference year 2017 onwards for Montenegro; reference year 2016 onwards for Turkey; and from reference years 2011 to 2019 for the United Kingdom.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because it is not based on an index number of time series.

Active substances in kilograms (kg). Values reported in other units such as colony-forming unit (CFU) are excluded from this data set (for more information see ‘3.1. Data description’). The values are rounded to the nearest kg.

Calendar year.

Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2009 concerning statistics on pesticides as amended by Commission Regulation (EU) 2021/2010 of 17 November 2021 as regards the list of active substances.

Commission Regulation (EU) No 656/2011 of 7 July 2011 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning statistics on pesticides, as regards definitions and list of active substances.

For specific details on national legal acts and/or other reporting agreements please check the attached national quality reports (available for each country and available at the upper right corner).

Not applicable.

Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council stipulates that ‘for reasons of confidentiality, the Commission (Eurostat) shall aggregate the data before publication in accordance with the chemical classes or categories of products indicated in Annex III, taking due account of the protection of confidential data at the level of individual Member State. The confidential data shall be used by national authorities and by the Commission (Eurostat) exclusively for statistical purposes, in accordance with Article 20 of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009’ (Article 3 (4)).

According to Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009, Eurostat cannot disclose data on individual active substances. In addition, the aggregated data cannot always be disseminated if there is a direct or indirect (secondary confidentiality) risk of statistical units being identified. 

If sales statistics were to be collected from retail sellers, there would be a high number of statistical units, giving little cause for data confidentiality issues. However, it has become apparent that most countries collect the data directly from authorisation holders. This means that, for most active substances, there is only one data provider, which leads to the information being confidential. As there are many classes with only a few substances, or the producer/importer is the same for many of the substances in the group, this has led to a situation where a considerable amount of aggregated data at higher levels is also confidential.

Confidential data are flagged ‘c’ in Eurostat’s dissemination database (Eurobase).

Data are published annually as soon as they are processed and validated by Eurostat. Target date is end of March t+2.

Not applicable.

In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice, Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat’s website respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.

Annually.

News releases are published on Eurostat’s official webpage.

Data are also published in the Statistics Explained article ‘Agri-environmental indicator – consumption of pesticides’.

Statistics at aggregated levels of pesticides (total sales of pesticides placed on the market, major groups, categories of products and chemical classes) are published on Eurobase in the dataset aei_fm_salpest09.

No micro-data are disseminated.

The data are also published under the agri-environmental indicators dashboard, and statistics on major groups are republished by OECD (Agriculture and Fisheries – Environmental Indicators for Agriculture – Agri-Environmental other indicators – Pesticides sales).

The methodology of each country is described in the national quality reports attached to this page (see upper right corner).

Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council stipulates that ‘for the purpose of this Regulation, the quality criteria as laid down in Article 12(1) of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 shall apply. Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with reports on the quality of the data transmitted as referred to in Annex I. The Commission (Eurostat) shall assess the quality of data transmitted’ (Article 4 (1)(2)).

Annual reports on the quality of the data (called national quality reports) exist for each country and are attached to this page (see upper right corner).

Validation of data file

The prime responsibility for ensuring the data completeness and accuracy rests with the National Statistical Authorities. The quality of the data is assured in the following way: countries transmit all active substances and all aggregates, which in turn are verified by Eurostat, by applying different validation rules related to coherence and plausibility (see point 18.4. Data validation).

Validation of quality report

The prime responsibility for ensuring the completeness and accuracy of the quality report rests with the National Statistical Institutes. The validation of the national quality reports by Eurostat takes place manually. If items are not answered satisfactory or even wrong, countries are asked to revise and resend the quality report.

Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council stipulates that ‘for the purpose of this Regulation, the quality criteria as laid down in Article 12(1) of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 shall apply. Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with reports on the quality of the data transmitted as referred to in Annex I. The Commission (Eurostat) shall assess the quality of data transmitted’ (Article 4 (1)(2)). 

Quality assessment of data

The overall assessment of the data quality is ‘good’. However, the data collection is facing methodological constraints related to the conversion of colony-forming unit (CFU) or other units used to express micro-organisms. Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 requires to report active substances in kilograms. As some biological fungicides and insecticides occur in various forms and concentrations, countries faced the difficulty to convert these other measuring units, for example colony-forming units (CFU), into kilograms. Due to the complexity of calculating quantities of micro-organisms in kilograms, there is currently no approved methodology for this conversion and no ensured comparability. Therefore, Eurostat decided to not disseminate micro-biological substances (F06 and I05 codes) so far.

Research is ongoing at Eurostat level with the aim to provide methodological support and to find a common approach for converting micro-biological substances into kilograms. First results can be found here.

Quality assessment of national quality report

The national quality report is developed by Eurostat in a detailed way with good guidelines to guarantee a consistent and complete picture of the national metadata.

The main users are the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE), the Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV), the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI), the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Environment Agency (EEA), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), researchers, students and the general public.

Statistics on pesticide sales are necessary to measure progress in meeting the main objective of the Directive 2009/128/EC – the reduction of risks from pesticide use for human health and the environment. For this purpose, the Harmonised Risk Indicators for pesticides (HRIs) were introduced through Commission Directive (EU) 2019/782. Pesticide sales statistics are also used to measure progress towards achieving the pesticide reduction targets under the Farm to Fork Strategy and Biodiversity Strategy:

• Target 1: to reduce by 50% the use and risk of chemical pesticides by 2030; and
• Target 2: to reduce by 50% the use of more hazardous pesticides by 2030.

More information on these indicators can be found on Eurostat’s website (Harmonised risk indicators for pesticides and Farm to fork strategy indicators for pesticides). 

No complete user satisfaction survey has been carried out. However, in a survey to the main users of pesticide statistics in the European Commission, the data users pointed out the need for a higher availability of more detailed data on active substance level, and on a more refined spatial level.

The countries deliver complete data sets to Eurostat in accordance with the Annex III of Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009. As regards EU Member States, Iceland and Norway, the completeness is good.

The below rates show the percentage of confidential data each year by taking into account the major groups, categories of products and chemical classes data:

The degree of accuracy is expected to be high.

Not applicable since data are collected either from administrative registers or full surveys.

Not applicable (see point 13.2).

Data are published at the latest 15 months after the end of the reference year.

National quality reports are published at the latest 20 months after the end of the reference year.

Most countries are able to meet the transmission deadlines (30 December of the year t+1 for data transmission; 31 March of the year t+2 for national quality reports transmission).

The data are collected and published on country level (NUTS 0).

From 2016 onwards, geographical comparability is very good due to the Harmonised classification of substances in Annex III of Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009.

Following methodological changes for the list of active substances (Annex III revised in February 2017), most of countries have reclassified data for the period 2011-2015 to align it with the latest classification. For these countries, the geographical comparability is ensured.

Data for the countries which have not yet transmitted reclassified 2011-2015 data according to the revised list of substances are currently flagged ‘d’ in Eurobase. For these countries, from 2011 to 2015, the geographical comparability is lower.

From 2016 onwards, time-series comparability is very good due to the Harmonised classification of substances in Annex III of Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009.

Following methodological changes for the list of active substances (Annex III revised in February 2017), most of countries have reclassified data for the period 2011-2015 to align it with the latest classification. For these countries, the time-series comparability (from 2011 onwards) is ensured.

Data for the countries which have not yet transmitted reclassified 2011-2015 data according to the revised list of substances are currently flagged ‘d’ in Eurobase. For these countries, from 2011 onwards, the time-series comparability is lower.

Some countries compare pesticide sales data with pesticide use data. The figures are not expected to match, because pesticides are also used in other sectors (like forestry, public green spaces, etc.) which are not covered in the agricultural use of pesticides. In addition, pesticide sales data reflect the sales of products which might not be used in the same year, whereas pesticide use data refer only to the actual use of pesticides in a year. Pesticide use data can also arise from stocks of previous years and are therefore not covered in the pesticide sales data of the same year.

All countries use the same harmonised classifications of pesticides, and data are complete. This ensures a good internal coherence of the data.

Specific information can be found in the attached national quality reports (see upper right corner).

The general Eurostat revision policy applies to this domain.

In pesticide sales statistics, the data are transmitted as stipulated by Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009, within 12 months of the end of the reference year. Data revisions or updates of the quality reports can be sent at any time. After validation of the revised data, the information is uploaded into the database.

All reported errors (once validated) result in corrections of the disseminated data.

Reported errors are corrected in the disseminated data as soon as the correct data have been validated.

Data may be published even if they are flagged as provisional or of low reliability for certain countries. They are replaced with final data once transmitted and validated.

Whenever new data are provided and validated, the already disseminated data are updated.

The source data varies according to countries. Data are mainly collected from administrative sources, and in some cases from surveys or censuses. Specific information can be found in the attached national quality reports (see upper right corner).

Annually.

Countries shall transmit to Eurostat the statistical results, including confidential data via the single entry point, as required by the Commission Regulation (EU) No 408/2011 (Article 1).

The data collection varies according to countries. Specific information can be found in the attached national quality reports (see upper right corner).

Eurostat validates data as follows:

Checking that all cells contain information (data or flags);

Checking that aggregates are correct (major groups, categories of products and chemical classes);

Checking that data confidential are protected, and cannot be calculated when non-confidential data are published (secondary confidentiality checks); and

Comparing the data with amounts of previous years (to detect any outliers – wrong reporting units).

If the internal systems of the Commission find errors during the validation step, the file is sent back to countries for revision.

Before any data transmission to Eurostat, the countries check data, and the national data validation varies according to countries. Specific information can be found in the attached national quality reports (see upper right corner).

Data compilation by countries

Data are aggregated by the countries according to the categories specified in Annex III of Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009.

Specific information on other data compilation procedures can be found in the attached national quality reports (see upper right corner).

Data compilation by Eurostat

In the dissemination, micro-biological substances are excluded from fungicides and insecticides data, from the original data sent by countries. The computation is as follows:

• TOTAL (Total) - F06 (Fungicides of micro-biological or botanical origin) - I05 (Insecticides of micro-biological or botanical origin);
• F (Fungicides and bactericides) - F06 (Fungicides of micro-biological or botanical origin); and
• I (Insecticides and acaricides) - I05 (Insecticides of micro-biological or botanical origin).

The observation values linked to these variables can thus vary between Eurostat’s publications and countries’ publications.

For more information about the reason of excluding micro-biological substances see '11.2. Quality management - assessment'.

Not applicable.

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