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

Czech Environment Minister Libor Ambrozek believes that tests of genetically
modified organisms (GMO) in the European Union should be unified and their
results should be simple and comparable, Environment Ministry spokeswoman
Karolina Sulova said today, March 2006.

Ambrozek will therefore demand at the meeting of the EU Council of
Ministers in Brussels on Thursday that a unified method of the GMO research
be introduced, Sulova said after Ambrozekīs meeting with members of
Greenpeace at which the problem was discussed.

The Czech Republicīs position on the second topic of the EU ministersī
meeting ensues from the situation that arose in the Czech Republic due to
mass imports of communal waste from Germany. Ambrozek will demand that the
new EU waste directive do not allow imports of waste for incineration, she
said.

Greenpeace activists demanded that Environment Ministry ban the cultivation
of genetically modified Bt-maize. They gave Ambrozek a scientific study on
the problem and called on other EU countries to adopt a similar approach.

"We want Mr Ambrozek to accept a temporary moratorium on the cultivation of
Bt-maize on the national level. The study we gave him proves its bad
influence on the environment," Czech Greenpeace spokeswoman Vladka Tejnska
told CTK.

Bt-maize that contains the gene of a bacteria that kills parasitoid of
pyralid moth larvae was first tested by Czech farmers on about 270 hectares
last year. The Czech state ranks the fifth in the EU as regards the acreage
of land under GM maize.

The waste directive will be a topic at a special seminar that will take
place on Thursday afternoon. The Czech Republic wants that the provision
allowing import of waste used as fuel be deleted from the EU directive since
it allows incinerators to formally declare themselves as facilities using
waste as fuel in the same way as electric and thermal power plants. If the
directive takes effect the Environment Ministry will not be able to prevent
import of waste for incineration.

It has so far rejected requests by German companies for the incineration of
tens of thousands of tonnes of waste in the Czech Republic arguing that it
is not a material used as fuel.

Ambrozek intends to meet with his German colleague at the meeting to discuss
the disposal of German waste that was illegally brought to the Czech
Republic.

The Environment Ministry does not want to allow the waste to end up in Czech
incinerators for preventive reasons, demanding that about 15,000 tonnes of
waste be taken back to Germany.

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