27/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - Parliament wants clarification on patentability of living matter. In a question recently put to the European Commission to which an oral response was requested, the chair of the European Parliament's agriculture committee, Czeslaw Adam Siekierski (EPP, Poland), supported by his colleague Pavel Svoboda, on behalf of the legal affairs committee, expressed concern that patents were being granted for plant varieties and asked for a solution to be found. At the end of March, the European Patent Office (EPO) Enlarged Board of Appeal approved a patent filed on varieties of broccoli and tomato from conventional plant breeding. The Agriculture Committee discussed this issue on 22 October (see EUROPE 11422). (LC)