FOCUS scenarios for assessing pesticide movement to surface water in EU registration

Some years ago the European Commission established the FOCUS-organisation, in which governmental agencies, academia and industry worked together on th e role of mathematical models in the registration process of plant protecti on products to estimate the predicted environmental concentration in the en vironmental compartments soil, groundwater and surface water. After having developed guidance on the use of specific models required for the estimatio n of surface water concentrations as the next step the development of Europ ean scenarios to be used in the models was considered a logical follow-up. The process of developing the scenarios is dealt with including the reasoni ng to come to the choices made. In addition, some conclusions and recommend ations of the working group are presented. Finally, some ideas are presente d on the way the scenarios could be used in the EU-registration process for plant protection products in the future. An important condition for the us e of models and scenarios is the availability of models and data including the expertise to interpret the results at the national authorities. Proposa ls will be presented to overcome these current gaps.