Brussels, 04/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - The path is clear for “à la carte cultivation” of GMOs in the European Union. On Monday 2 March, the Council of the EU formally adopted the European directive that will now allow member states, subject to strict conditions, to ban or restrict cultivation within their borders of GMOs that have been authorised at EU level.
The new rules will come into force 20 days after their publication in the Official Journal.
The text was adopted without debate on the sidelines of the Competitiveness Council. Portugal abstained. It should be borne in mind that this is an amendment of Directive 2001/18/EC on the deliberate release into the environment of GMOs, proposed by the European Commission in July 2010. Tough negotiation ensued, so sensitive is this issue. The legal basis for the directive is internal market (Article 114) and not environment.
Latvian Agriculture Minister and Council President Janis Duklavs said: “The new rules will give member states the freedom of choice. This is in line with the subsidiarity principle and respects citizens' and farmers' preferences”.
To allow the member states to make use of the greater flexibility, the new directive introduces a two-stage procedure: during the authorisation procedure, a member state can ask for the geographical scope of an application by a biotechnology company to be amended; after a GMO has been authorised, a member state may ban or restrict cultivation on environmental or agricultural policy grounds, or other compelling grounds, such as town and country planning, land use, socio-economic impact, co-existence of crops or public policy. Member states will be allowed to review their decision and ask for all or parts of their territory to be reintegrated into the geographical scope of a GMO authorisation.
Member states in which GMOs are grown must take care to avoid cross-border contamination in neighbouring states where GMOs are banned. This does not apply if geographical conditions make these co-existence measures unnecessary.
Many have been critical of the lack of legal certainty for any future national banning measures, which could come under attack from the WTO. The entry into force of the new legislation will bring an end to the impasse on authorisations for cultivation of GMOs in the EU. Currently, Monsanto's transgenic maize MON 810 is the only GMO to be cultivated in the European Union. (Aminata Niang)