www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

France and Germany may win only a small amount of leeway if they fail to
update national laws on genetically modified (GMO) foods and crops on time
next month, or risk legal action and hefty fines at Europe's highest court,
February 2006.

After years of warnings to both countries to comply with EU law and
integrate an EU directive on the environmental release of GMO?s into their
national statute books, Brussels has started to lose patience at the lack of
action in Paris and Berlin. The directive, agreed by EU governments in 2001,
regulates how GMO crops may be grown and approved across the bloc and ranks
as the EU's main law, of around five, on biotech crops.

In December, France and Germany got a final order from the European
Commission, charged with administering EU law, to fall into line with GMO
policy in the rest of the European Union.

They are the last countries to do so, after Greece received a warning last
July that it had also failed to put the law, known as the Deliberate Release
directive, into its national statute book. All this should have been done by
October 2002.

"Since the case is so advanced, I think we'd probably give them a little
more time - and if they indicate that they are very close to adopting this
necessary law," one Commission official told Reuters.

After the Commission sends its final written warning, known as a reasoned
opinion, a period of two months begins for the member state concerned to
comply with EU law. France and Germany received reasoned opinions in
mid-December.

But given the Commission's holiday break over Europe's Christmas and New
Year period, that deadline has been pushed back to early March, officials
say.

"They would normally be required to come back to us, probably in early
March," the official said. "And if nothing happened, we would take the next
step and take them to court."

The warnings are the final chance for both countries to update their
legislation before the Commission becomes entitled to ask the European Court
of Justice (ECJ), the EU's highest court based in Luxembourg, to impose
financial penalties.

Germany had failed to adopt an additional law needed to integrate the EU
directive into its national statute book. France has only partially
integrated it and not specified when it will do the rest, despite reminders,
the Commission says.

Not only had the two countries failed to comply with an ECJ judgement from
2004, they then proceeded to ignore warnings from Brussels, it said in
December.

[www.planetark.com]

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