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The Austrian vote was made possible by the fall of the far-right government in May that left a void, pending anticipated elections in September.
Austrian lawmakers on Tuesday approved a total ban on Monsanto's glyphosate, putting the country on track to becoming the first European Union (EU) member to forbid all use of the carcinogenic herbicide.
Deputies voted in favor of a bill brought by the Social Democratic party to ban glyphosate products, suspected of causing cancer, as a "precautionary" measure. The Austrian vote was made possible by the fall of the far-right government in May that left a void, pending anticipated elections in September.
An ad-hoc grouping of social democrats, the far-right FPOe, ecologists, and liberals managed to pass the bill during last week's truncated legislative session.
Among Austria's EU partners, France said in 2017 it hoped to ban glyphosate within three years, but President Emmanuel Macron has since said such a move could not be "100 percent." After two years of fierce debate, EU member states decided in late 2017 to renew glyphosate's license for five years.
The EU's executive body, the European Commission, pointed to the approval of glyphosate by its two scientific agencies, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Chemicals Agency, which do not classify the substance as carcinogenic.
But the EFSA's independence was questioned after media reports suggested that pages of its report were copied and pasted from analyses from a 2012 Monsanto study.
The weedkiller has been closely connected with Roundup, a flagship product marketed worldwide by United States (U.S.) giant Monsanto which was acquired by multinational pharmaceutical Bayer in 2018.
Under fire for the takeover, the German company has vowed more "transparency" during the process of renewing the license of glyphosate in the EU. It has insisted, however, that glyphosate "will continue to play an important role in agriculture and in Bayer's portfolio."
Roundup has been the subject of three costly judgments in California in recent months and is now the subject of more than 13,000 claims in the U.S.
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