The European Parliament voted on Wednesday to completely reject the sustainable use regulation (SUR), which would give legal backing to the Farm to Fork strategy’s aim of cutting the EU’s pesticide usage in half by 2030 and imposing pesticide reduction targets on member states.

The proposed regulation is now off the table and will not be revisited by MEPs, as no majority was reached to send the proposals back to the Parliament’s environment committee to be amended.

The vote could represent the single biggest setback to date to the European Commission’s rollout of Green Deal and Farm to Fork strategies.

President of EU farmers’ group Copa Christiane Lambert welcomed MEPs’ rejection of the regulation, saying the policymakers who drafted it “ignored the opinions of the sectors concerned”.

Copa stated that the proposals could have been kept alive had flexibility been shown and amendments made to settle farmers’ concerns with the regulation.