Brussels, 03/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 3 June, the European Commission decided not to respond positively to the call made by 1.17 million Europeans, through the European Citizens' Initiative 'Stop Vivisection' (see EUROPE 11267), to put an immediate end to animal testing.
Let's give science and the current legislation time to pursue the goal of ending animal testing, a goal shared by all of us, gradually. This is the gist of the message sent out by the Commission, following the meeting of the College of Commissioners, which adopted its response to this citizens' initiative, in the form of a communication.
This means that there will be no question of repealing directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes and proposing new legislation which would have put an immediate stop to vivisection, as the signatories of the initiative called for.
The Commission feels that the reason to justify this choice is quite simple, as “the directive is the right legislation to achieve the underlying objectives of the initiative, therefore no repeal of that legislation is proposed”, a press release states. Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that “some animal testing is still required to move forward research and to safeguard human and animal health and the environment”, the Commission adds.
Instead of repealing the text, therefore, the Commission is proposing a series of “additional measures” to achieve the objective of “phasing out animal testing in Europe” more quickly. The main one of these measures is to hold a conference in 2016, bringing together the scientific community and stakeholders, at which the Commission will present a report on the state of progress of the measures taken. However, it is not yet time to re-examine the directive, it stressed.
The League of European Research Universities (LERU) welcomed the decision, arguing that “the moment has not yet come” to end animal testing. This opinion is shared by the Vice-President of the Commission, Jyrki Katainen (Employment, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness), who stated in a press release that “a complete ban on animal research in the EU would be premature and it would risk chasing out biomedical research from Europe”. (Jan Kordys)