The European Commission will test US wheat imports for a strain of herbicide-resistant wheat developed by Monsanto, a global leader in agricultural biotechnology, but never approved by food regulators in the United States.

Any contaminated wheat would be banned, the Commission said.

Health and environmental campaign groups seized the discovery of the glyphosate-resistant strain to call for European-wide restrictions and to reverse policies that give national governments leeway over approving the sale and cultivation of GM crops.

The European Association for Soaps, Detergents and Maintenance Products (AISE), launched the initiative, “I prefer 30”, in Milan to raise awareness of the unnecessary waste caused by a higher heat laundry cycle.

The group estimates that a 3º drop in the five participating countries - Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy and Britain - would save some 1300 GWH of energy, roughly the same as the electricity consumption of a city of more than 180,000 people, such as Parma.

Italy's economy is mired in a recession that has been dragging on since mid-2011, driving up unemployment and forcing the closure of thousands of companies.

Germany, Europe's biggest economy, has resisted calls to loosen budgetary constraints on southern European countries.

Sixteen countries, including Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Italy and Poland, currently allow victims to sue for damages. However, private lawsuits are rare in Europe because of the disparate rules and procedures in the different countries.

Unrecovered damages of infringements of EU antitrust law amount to over €20 billion a year, according to an estimate by the European Commission three years ago.

The draft proposal by the European Commission sets common standards and minimum requirements for the EU, a Commission document obtained by Reuters said.

Oil price reporting agencies were already under renewed scrutiny after European authorities raided the London office of lead price publisher Platts - a unit of McGraw Hill - as well as oil majors BP, Shell and Statoil , saying they suspected oil prices had been manipulated (see background).

The EU's draft law, which is unlikely to take effect before 2014, proposes that regulation of top benchmarks like Libor and oil be shifted to the Paris-based European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

Presenting the award, the chairman of the selection jury, Bernard Vergnes, noted that leadership is a complex and multifaceted concept. "We are looking here at someone that people would choose to follow, someone we all would like to play a greater European role in the future," he said.

Respectively leaders of the Liberals and Greens in the European Parliament, Verhofstadt and Cohn-Bendit have relentlessly pushed for a much closer union with a eurozone government and a separate eurozone budget.