Member states resist pressure to lift GMO bans[fr] 

Meeting on 29 November, a regulatory committee failed to reach a decision to put legal pressure over five EU member states to lift their national bans on GM (genetically modified) products. Austria, France, Germany, Greece and Luxembourg argued they have the right to say whether a product is safe or not and the committee was left divided over the issue. Since it failed to reach the qualified majority required for the adoption of the Commission's draft proposal, a decision is now expected to be taken by the Council of Ministers.

The countries in question are currently blocking the use of five GMO varieties authorised in the EU (three modified maize varieties and two types of oilseed rape) by invoking a so-called 'safeguard clause' covering mainly the cultivation and the use in animal feed of GMOs. Yet they have been unable to provide reliable new evidence underpinning their safety concerns.

The Commission has argued for an end to the bans, a move which is highly unpopular in these countries where the public is strongly opposed to biotechnology. However, the EU has been under international pressure to be more open to GMOs since the US, Argentina and Canada launched a case against it in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in August 2003. 

A five-year 'de facto' moratorium on the authorisation of new GMOs was lifted earlier this year with the entry into force of the EU's labelling and traceability legislation, on 15 April. The US, however, has argued that the moratorium will have been genuinely lifted only when the EU allows GM crops to be grown on its territory as opposed to only allowing them to be imported.

The regulatory committee equally failed to reach a decision on authorising a new genetically modified maize, Monsanto's 'MON 863' (resistant to corn rootworm), for import and use in animal feed.

The Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament has pointed out that this was the ninth consecutive time since 1998 that the member states have rejected the entry of GM products into the EU. "It is worth remembering that the Commission has never yet obtained the necessary qualified majority from member states to accept its proposals on GMOs. This situation confirms, once again, that a chasm exists between the Commission's intentions and the democratic requirements of the majority of European states that are hostile to GMOs," said German MEP Hiltrud Breyer.

"European countries should be congratulated for not supporting these outrageous proposals. [...] This should serve as wake-up call for them to start fighting for the right of countries to ban genetically modified foods instead of caving in to the pressure of the World Trade Organisation and the Bush Administration," said Adrian Bebb, GMO campaigner of the environmental NGO Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE). 

On the other hand, Europabio, a representative of the EU-based biotech industry, has argued for the removal of the bans. “The fact of the matter is that the EU’s Food Safety Authority has rejected all of the “new” information provided by these member states. They have no scientific basis to maintain their bans,” Simon Barber, Director of the Plant Biotechnology Unit at EuropaBio, was quoted as saying in a press release prior to the vote.