EU authorizes member countries can approve GM crop planting separately

The EU Member States should in the future be able to decide on whether or not they will allow cultivation of approved genetically modified plants in their country. In order to avoid a long-drawn-out procedure for changing the current regulations, the Commission wants to swiftly enact new guidelines for coexistence. Subsequently, countries would be able to pass extremely strict cultivation regulations for GM-plants which would all but preclude an agricultural use. In this way individual countries could dictate, for example, that the distance of fields with conventional and GM-plants has to be ten or more kilometres.

In a second step, the current regulations should be so modified that countries can invoke "socio-economic criteria" if they wish to enact regional bans on cultivation. Since the Member States and the EU Parliament have to endorse this with the necessary majority, it could take up to two years until the new regulation are in force.

For national bans on cultivation, however, countries should as a rule not be able to refer to dangers for the environment or health. Otherwise, the credibility of the EU-wide approval procedure is put in jeopardy, since a GMO product can only then be approved if its safety has been certified according to the then current scientific state of knowledge.

The rough direction for the separation of the decision-making authority for GM-plants between the EU Commission and the individual Member States was already given by Commissions president Jos Manuel Barroso before his re-election last autumn. Previously, in summer 2009, several Member States, including The Netherlands and Austria, had put up a similar suggestion for discussion in the EU council of environmental ministers. Through this, the political blockade was to be overcome that prevented clear, and for the public comprehensible, decisions.

For many years no clear majority has been achieved in the council of ministers in ballots on the approval of GM-plants and the food- and feedstuffs produced from them. As a general rule, the EU commission then decides, as laid down in the European treaties, on the basis of scientific safety assessments of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). In the case of MON810-maize, some countries, such as Germany or France, prohibited the cultivation of the EU-approved GM-plants, invoking a protection clause in the EU regulations. A political justification for a ban on cultivation was until now impermissible.

The proposals of the Commission for the new regulations for green gene technology have provoked a variable echo. "The proposals are legally dubious, stand in contradiction to the common market and will deepen the disagreements between the Member States," wrote the Reuters news agency, citing an observer in Brussels. In addition, national bans are not compatible with world trade treaties.

A spokesperson from BayerCropScience, although supporting "the aim of placing all Member states in the position to make their decisions on the cultivation of GMOs," at the same time criticised the plan of the Commission to alter the existing legal framework and with it again the possibility of long-lasting conflicts.

The environmental protection organization Friends of the Earth signalised a "cautious sanction," primarily because the Member States would in the future be entitled to declare themselves as "gene technology-free zones." At the same time, criticism was aimed at the intended acceleration of the approval process if approval is granted in future without delays through political discussion and on the basis of scientific findings.