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France seeks solution to EU GMO deadlock
Posted by: Prof. Dr. M. Raupp (IP Logged)
Date: June 05, 2008 01:54PM

Environment ministers will meet today to discuss French proposals to
overcome the loopholes in the EU's decision-making process on granting
market authorisation to GM crops.

Today's discussions follow a Commission debate, held on 7 May 2008, that
took stock of the Council's current inability to take decisions on
authorising new GM crops.

The discussion will be held at the request of France based on a dossier
prepared by French officials. The objective is to consider ways to solve the
current deadlock in the Council and make product approvals or rejection
easier.

France's aim is also to prepare a potential high-level ministerial
discussion on the issue to be held during the French EU Presidency starting
on 1 July 2008. The objective, according to French officials, is "to find
pragmatic solutions without calling everything into question".

France will today propose improvements to the decision-making process on
GMOs on four areas:

* Environmental impact assessment of GM crops, including toxicity of
pesticide-producing GMOs and of their effects on non-targeted species;
* improving the work of scientific expertise involved in the risk assessment
procedure by, for example, asking the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)
to take better into account the opinions of national competent authorities;
* establishing thresholds for GM contamination in seeds, to guarantee
continuity of activities of GMO-free actors;
* further studies about member states' right to regulate the cultivation of
approved GM crops and closer cooperation with EFSA on specific arrangements
regarding special ecosystems, such as agricultural systems or geographical
areas.

The upcoming French Presidency hopes to continue the debate started by
Austria in 2006 to determine whether EFSA is sufficiently equipped to make
scientific counter-evaluations of safety assessment dossiers provided by
industry. The risk assessment dossiers provided by the biotech industry are,
according to a French official, often "very heavy" and "difficult to check".

Earlier this year, France invoked an EU safeguard clause and suspended the
marketing and growth on its territory of an EU-authorised GM crop, citing
new scientific evidence on a negative impact of the crops on flora and
fauna.

Several other EU member states have repeatedly criticised EFSA for pro-GMO
bias and say it has approved GM products without proper research. Both the
special regulatory procedure and the role of EFSA have been the subject of
criticism, and the Commission decided in 2006 that some practical changes
were needed to improve EFSA's GMO-approval process.

In May 2008, the Commission referred, for the first time ever, a number of
pending GMO approvals back to EFSA for further review of scientific evidence
of their potential effects on the environment and human health.


June 5, 2008 www.checkbiotech.org



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