Luxembourg announced on Monday it was resuming the sale of glyphosate-based products after becoming the first EU country to ban the controversial herbicide in 2020, a ban overturned by the Grand Duchy’s courts, AFP reported.

On February 1, 2020, the country revoked the authorization for the sale of glyphosate-based plant protection products, allowing the disposal of existing stocks, and then completely banning their use on the territory of Luxembourg from January 1, 2021.

The ban was overturned on Friday by an appeal decision of the Luxembourg Administrative Court. The judges pointed to the “lack of any indication of legal justification” for the ban on the eight products in question, which is contrary to the EU legal regime that allowed their distribution.

“The consequence of this annulment is that the authorizations for the relevant phytosanitary products are restored from the date of the decision,” Luxembourg’s agriculture ministry said on Monday.

“The court confirmed that the withdrawal (of marketing authorizations) violated European law,” said German chemical giant Bayer, which appealed the ban on its products, including the Roundup brand, in administrative courts.

“The recall was not based on any scientific or regulatory elements implicating glyphosate or products based on the substance,” a spokesman for the group told AFP.

In early December, the European Commission decided to extend for one year, until December 15, 2023, the current authorization for glyphosate in the EU, which was already renewed in 2017 for five years, pending a scientific evaluation by European regulatory authorities.

The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) plans to hand over in July 2023 a long-awaited study on “the risks of glyphosate to animals, humans and the environment”, which is considered key to the decision to extend the herbicide’s authorization for another five years.

The government of Luxembourg, a small nation of 645,000 people located between Germany, Belgium and France, banned glyphosate following a political agreement reached in 2018 by the ruling coalition – the first in the EU.