Brussels, 04/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - Negotiators at the European Parliament and Council finally reached an informal agreement on Wednesday evening 3 December during the trilogue on the draft proposal of July 2010. This seeks to provide member states with the opportunity, subject to very strict conditions, of restricting or banning GM crops on their respective territory, even though the crop in question may have been authorised at an EU level (see EUROPE 11195). The Parliament pulled out all the stops to ensure the legal security of the future banning measures at a national level but the Council often proved inflexible. This agreement still needs to be confirmed by Coreper, the European Parliament and Council.
The main contentious questions were resolved in the following way: (1) the member states will either be able to demand that the company requesting authorisation for developing a GM crop exclude from the geographical field of authorisation (phase 1), or prohibit or limit, the crop without formulating a prior request to the biotech company (phase 2). The Parliament succeeded in ensuring that phase 2 is not subject to conditions in phase 1; (2) member states can prohibit GM groups (depending on genetic characteristics or crops); (3) the legal “Internal Market” basis (Article 114) is maintained, as sought by the Commission and Council (the Parliament did not manage to ensure that Article 192 “Environment”, which would have given a firmer legal basis for prohibitive measures when dealing with industry and the WTO); (3) member states will certainly be able to prohibit GM crops on the basis of “environmental policy objectives” but not for reasons relating to environmental impact of GM crops. Out of the eight environmental motives that the Parliament wanted to be able to invoke, only those in which EFSA does not have a remit to have been retained. Two of these therefore cannot be taken into account: - the interest, maintaining and development of agricultural practices that provide a greater potential for reconciling the production and sustainability of ecosystems; - the maintaining of local biodiversity, including certain habitats and ecosystems, as well a certain kinds of natural landscapes and functions and services pertaining to specific ecosystems.
Gian Luca Galletti, the acting president of the Environment Council, was delighted that “the agreement in principle reached has brought us very close to a major European objective: the recognition of sovereignty and the autonomy of each member state regarding GM crops”. He also spoke of a “fair and balanced compromise” that provided member states with the freedom of choice. Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, was delighted that the opt-out granted to member states “will not affect risk assessments at an EU level” which will remain within the remit of EFSA. He said that if the agreement is confirmed, it would respond to the demands continually put forward by member states to have the last word and would better take into account national specificities.
Marco Contiero from Greenpeace, however, criticised the fact that this text did not provide governments with a solid legal basis for an opt-out and added that member states would be “bound hand and foot” because they would not be able to provide proof of environmental damage to ban GM crops, and the countries that reject them would be exposed to attacks from the biotech industry. According to one observer, the attitude displayed by the United Kingdom was to exert a sort of minority blockage and it ultimately imposed its conditions during negotiations, which limited the Council's room for manoeuvre. (AN)