Ecological Integrity Starts With Pesticide Reduction: The Value Case for National Nature Restoration Plans

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A value case for EU Member States on why pesticide reduction is the fastest, most legally coherent route to compliance with the Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR).

In brief:

• Ecological integrity: the legal standard the Regulation sets for success cannot be reached while ecosystems remain under sustained chemical pressure.

• Reducing pesticide use is a proven and effective lever to restore biodiversity, not a theoretical one: the evidence of recovery is already documented.

• IPM is the practical delivery tool, a legal obligation since 2014 that is under-enforced, not under-legislated.

• Pesticide reduction is the coherence anchor linking the Regulation to instruments Member States already report on: Zero Pollution, Biodiversity Strategy, Farm to Fork, Soil Strategy, CAP.

• Acting now means Plans respond to citizens' expectations, backed by over a million EU citizens who have already asked for exactly this.

We cannot restore what we keep poisoning.

Every National Restoration Plan (NRP) submitted without a credible pesticide-reduction pathway will fall short of its own targets. Not eventually, structurally. This is the core finding of the policy brief from BeeLife and PAN Europe, and it carries a direct message for the ministries and agencies now drafting these Plans. Pesticide reduction is not an added burden on the Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR): it is the mechanism that makes the Regulation deliverable.

Reducing pesticide use is a proven and effective lever to restore biodiversity.

Evidence from pesticide bans, IPM implementation and organic conversion consistently shows biodiversity rebounding once chemical pressure is lifted. For institutions weighing where to invest limited restoration budgets, pesticide reduction is one of the few measures with a demonstrated, repeatable track record of reversing decline, not just slowing it.

The article below summarises the policy brief "For a Successful National Restoration Plan: Reducing Pesticide Pressure on Biodiversity", published by BeeLife and PANEurope. Full brief and references: www.bee-life.eu.

Nature Restoration Regulation Recommendations for National Restoration Plans.pdf

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The problem institutions are underestimating

Pesticides are already present in the areas we are trying to restore.

• Between 2013 and 2023, one or more pesticides were detected above their effect threshold in 19% to 27% of river water bodies (1).

• 74.5% of soil sites tested of the 3,473 sites, investigated in the 2018 EU LUCAS survey, contained pesticide residues; nearly 30% held more than five different substances (2).

• Insects sampled inside German nature conservation areas carried residues of 47 different pesticides, averaging 16.7 compounds per sample (3).

• Long-term EU-wide monitoring shows an overall 25% decline in bird abundance, with farmland birds declining by approximately 60%, reflecting the loss of insect prey (4). 

The implication for institutions is direct: restoration targets under Articles 4, 8, 10 and 11 will not hold if the chemical pressure driving decline is left unaddressed. Habitat measures alone cannot outpace ongoing contamination.

The Regulation itself defines success as ecological integrity, habitats whose structure, function and typical species reflect a state of long-term stability and resilience (Art. 3(4)). That standard cannot be met while ecosystems remain under sustained chemical pressure. Ecological integrity is not a by-product of habitat restoration; it depends on removing the stressor that keeps undermining it.

The lever: Integrated Pest Management (IPM)

IPM is not a new obligation. It is an existing one that is not being enforced.

Integrated Pest Management has been a legal requirement under the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive since 2014 (Articles 3 and 14, Annex III). It prioritises prevention — crop rotation, cover crops, natural pest regulation — before any chemical intervention. It is already the law. What is missing is enforcement.

This matters for institutions for one practical reason: IPM delivers restoration outcomes without requiring new legal architecture.

• Effective IPM implementation has been shown to cut insecticide applications by up to 95% while maintaining or enhancing crop yields (5).

• Farmer-level evidence across Europe confirms pesticide use can be substantially reduced without compromising farm profitability (6).

• IPM directly supports Article 11 indicators - grassland butterflies, soil organic carbon, landscape diversity, farmland birds - because it rebuilds the ecological functions (pest regulation, pollination, soil biology) those indicators measure.

Practical takeaway for Plans: Member States that operationalise IPM - mandatory advisory services, crop-specific non-chemical guidance, CAP eco-scheme conditionality, etc. - get measurable progress against Regulation indicators using a compliance tool they are already legally obliged to run.

The keyword institutions need: Coherence

A pesticide-blind Restoration Plan creates legal and administrative risk. A pesticide-integrated one creates coherence.

This is where the value proposition sharpens. Pesticide reduction is not a standalone environmental ask — it is the connective tissue between the NRR and instruments Member States are already implementing or reporting against:

Existing EU instrument	Where pesticide reduction is already required or targeted
Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive (SUD)	Mandatory IPM (since 2014); buffer zones; crop rotation; low-risk product preference, etc.
Zero Pollution Action Plan	50% cut in chemical pesticide use
EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030	25% organic farmland; agroecological uptake
Farm to Fork Strategy	Reduced dependency on chemical pesticides
EU Pollinators Initiative	Mitigating pesticide impacts on pollinators
Birds & Habitats Directives	Species protection, including from pollution
Water Framework, Groundwater & Drinking Water Directives	Protection of water from pesticide contamination
EU Soil Strategy / Soil Monitoring Law (2025/2360)	Soil contamination monitoring, incl. pesticides
CAP eco-schemes (2023–2027)	Compensation for reduced-pesticide practices; IPM eco-schemes, etc.

A NRP built around pesticide reduction, and IPM reports once and complies many times over. A Plan that treats pesticides as out-of-scope risks, contradicting the very frameworks it will be assessed against, creating rework, delay, and exposure to infringement pressure further down the line.

What a coherent plan looks like in practice

Article 4 — Terrestrial, coastal, freshwater ecosystems Enforce existing SUD buffer-zone and low-risk-product obligations at national level; this is largely an enforcement gap, not a legislative one.

Article 8 — Urban ecosystems Restrict pesticide use beyond low-risk/biological control in parks, schools and public spaces. France, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Luxembourg have already done this nationally — the operational model exists and is transferable.

Article 10 — Pollinator decline Prohibit pesticide use in Natura 2000 sites and other sensitive habitats (already provided for under SUD Art. 12(b)); fund independent pollination advisory networks; apply buffer zones around protected habitats.

Article 11 — Agricultural ecosystems Make CAP transition payments conditional on measurable pesticide-use and toxicity reduction; mandate digital pesticide-use records (already required EU-wide from 2027); redirect subsidies away from pesticide-intensive systems.

The co-benefits case, in numbers

• Public health: Pesticide-linked chronic disease costs France alone an estimated €48.5 million per year in direct health expenditure (7).

• Biodiversity recovery is fast where action is taken: post-ban monitoring in Paris recorded 118 wild bee species and 37 hoverfly species, including 32 species not previously documented in the city (8).

• Farm economics: IPM and reduced-pesticide systems show no consistent yield or profitability penalty across multiple European farm-level studies (9).

• Public mandate: over 1 million EU citizens backed the Save Bees and Farmers European Citizens' Initiative calling for a pesticide phase-out (10).
  

This is also about legitimacy. Participants in the Conference on the Future of Europe explicitly called for a "drastic reduction of chemical pesticides and fertilisers across all types of farms” (11). A NRP that sidesteps pesticides fails to respond to citizens' expectations on one of the issues they have raised most consistently, a gap that carries political as well as ecological cost.

The ask

NRPs are being finalised now. The evidence base is not in dispute, the legal tools (SUD, CAP conditionality) already exist, and the coherence case for integrating pesticide reduction is stronger — and less risky — than treating it as a separate track.

BeeLife and PAN Europe recommend that Member States:

1. Set explicit, measurable pesticide-reduction targets within their NRPs under Articles 4, 8, 10 and 11.

2. Enforce existing IPM obligations rather than introducing new instruments.

3. Align CAP funding conditionality with Regulation indicators (Farmland Bird Index, Grassland Butterfly Index, Pollinator indicators).

4. Use pesticide reduction as the coherence anchor linking the Regulation to the Zero Pollution Action Plan, Biodiversity Strategy, Farm to Fork, and Soil Strategy reporting.

This article summarises the policy brief "For a Successful National Restoration Plan: Reducing Pesticide Pressure on Biodiversity", published by BeeLife European Beekeeping Coordination and Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe. Full brief and references: www.bee-life.eu.

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References (1) Liess et al., 2021 (2) European Environment Agency 2025, Pesticides residues in EU soils  (3) Brühl et al. 2021 (4) Rigal et al. 2023; Monnet et al. 2026 (5) Pecenka et al. 2021 Deguine, J.-P., Aubertot, J.-N., Flor, R.J. et al. (2023). Integrated Pest Management: Good Intentions, Hard Realities. A Review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development (6) Lechenet et al., 2017 ; Pecenka et al. 2021; Tibi et al. 2022 (INRAE); Nandillion et al. 2024; Nandillon et al. 2026 ; PAN Europe, 2025. Farming beyond pesticides: success stories from the field; IPMWORKS project - Smarter agriculture: farmers work with nature to cut pesticides; EARA 2025, Farmer-led Research on Europe’s Full Productivity The Realities of Producing More and Better with Less.

(7) Alliot et al. 2022 (8) Zaninotto & Dajoz 2022 (9) Lechenet et al., 2017 ; Pecenka et al. 2021; Tibi et al. 2022 (INRAE); Nandillion et al. 2024; Nandillon et al. 2026 ; PAN Europe, 2025. Farming beyond pesticides: success stories from the field; IPMWORKS project - Smarter agriculture: farmers work with nature to cut pesticides; EARA 2025, Farmer-led Research on Europe’s Full Productivity The Realities of Producing More and Better with Less. (10) https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2019/000016_en (11) Conference on the Future of Europe - European Commission