EU Court Upholds Glyphosate Approval, Rejects NGO Challenge

10 November 2026, Luxembourg: The General Court of the European Union has dismissed a legal challenge seeking to overturn glyphosate’s renewed approval in the bloc, upholding the herbicide’s authorization through December 15, 2033 and rejecting arguments that regulators failed to properly weigh cancer risk evidence.

The ruling, issued on November 4 in Luxembourg, came in case T-503/24, brought by Antidote Europe, a Strasbourg based nonprofit, against the European Commission. Bayer Agriculture, whose Roundup brand is built around glyphosate, intervened in the case in support of the Commission. The case was heard on March 18 this year, with the judgment following roughly eight months later.

Antidote Europe had asked the Commission to conduct an internal review of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/2660, the November 2023 measure that renewed glyphosate’s approval across the European Union for ten years. When the Commission rejected that review request in June 2024, in a decision referenced internally as Ares(2024)4619252, Antidote Europe brought the matter before the General Court, seeking both the annulment of the Commission’s refusal and, as a consequence, the annulment of the underlying renewal regulation itself.

Court narrows the case before ruling on merits

The Third Chamber of the General Court, presided over by Judge K. Kowalik-Bańczyk with Judge I. Reine as rapporteur, worked through five pleas originally raised by Antidote Europe. The applicant withdrew its third and fifth pleas, part of its fourth plea, and its first plea during the hearing, narrowing the case to two issues: whether the Commission had properly applied the precautionary principle, and whether it had met its obligations under Articles 8 and 33 of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009, the EU’s core plant protection product law.

The court also excluded several arguments on procedural grounds, holding that an internal review request under Regulation (EC) No 1367/2006 can only be challenged in court on the basis of matters that were actually raised in that original request. Two scientific studies, dated 2021 and July 2023, were cited for the first time in Antidote Europe’s court filing rather than in its original review request, and the court declined to consider them on that basis.

Articles 8 and 33 of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009, the second substantive issue the court examined, set out the data and documentation that an applicant must submit when seeking approval or renewal of a plant protection active substance, including studies on the proposed uses, residues and the substance’s fate in the environment. Antidote Europe had argued that the Commission’s reliance on industry supplied data, as structured under that framework, was insufficient to rule out a cancer risk from long term exposure to glyphosate.

On the substance, the court held that the Commission had adequately addressed the question of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity when it renewed the approval. It found that the precautionary principle does not require regulators to obtain absolute proof that a substance is safe before approving it, and that the Commission, acting as risk manager, was entitled to rely on what the court described as a scientifically exhaustive assessment carried out ahead of the 2023 renewal. On that basis, the General Court dismissed Antidote Europe’s action in full.

The court ordered Antidote Europe to bear its own costs as well as those incurred by the European Commission, as the Commission had requested. Bayer Agriculture, as an intervening party, was ordered to bear its own costs.

Approval now runs through 2033

Glyphosate remains the most widely used herbicide in the European Union and globally, underpinning no till farming systems and weed control programs across a wide range of crops. The 2023 renewal, now reaffirmed by the General Court’s dismissal of this challenge, keeps the active substance authorized for use across the bloc for roughly another seven years, subject to the usual national level restrictions that individual member states apply to specific products and uses. The judgment can still be appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union on points of law, which would be the next avenue open to Antidote Europe if it chooses to continue the case.

Glyphosate’s EU approval has been the subject of repeated legal challenges from environmental and health focused groups in the years since the Commission first renewed it, with Antidote Europe’s case being the latest attempt to use the internal review mechanism under Regulation (EC) No 1367/2006 to force a reassessment of the substance outside the normal renewal timetable.

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