Spain’s Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, called, on Tuesday 26 March, on the EU Council to reach a rapid agreement on the proposal to regulate the use of new genomic techniques (NGTs).
At the EU ‘Agriculture’ Council, Spain, supported by the Czech, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Dutch, Portuguese and Swedish delegations, requested (https://aeur.eu/f/bgz ) that the EU Council finalise discussions on NGTs (see EUROPE 13345/2).
Given the time remaining before the European elections, it will in any case not be possible to complete this project during the current mandate.
“We need to move forward in the EU Council to negotiate with the European Parliament and find a legal framework so that farmers can use these NGTs”, argued Mr Planas.
“The European Parliament has already adopted its position, so we need to move forward and get to the trilogue as quickly as possible”, said the Dutch minister. Denmark regretted the stalemate. Italy stated it was important to adopt the regulation quickly, as did Cyprus and France (improvements to the text were suggested by France).
Ireland has said it supports the compromise text on the table, unlike other countries.
Romania still has reservations about the text, as does Poland. These countries claim that the text did not provide sufficient guarantees on the issue of patents and the protection of conventional crops.
Austria raised the problems of labelling and coexistence between NGT plants and organic production. We need to be cautious about the effects on the environment, stressed Slovenia. Slovakia, for its part, referred to the risks surrounding these NGTs. Croatia considered it important for a country to be able to ban these NGTs on its soil. We need to keep working on this, said Luxembourg. There are still “unresolved issues and divergent opinions on certain points”, said the German delegation.
Stella Kyriakides, the Commissioner for Health, stressed that these NGTs will contribute to innovation in the agricultural sector. Many countries have already taken steps to modernise their rules, she said. She added that she hoped for a rapid agreement on this text in the EU Council so that negotiations could begin with the European Parliament. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)