MEP Christophe Clergeau (S&D, French) told a group of journalists on Wednesday 14 January that the European Parliament vote to approve the interinstitutional agreement concerning the regulation on using new genomic techniques (NGTs) would be close.
The vote in Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety was due to take place on Monday 19 January, but has been postponed until 28 January. The plenary vote could take place in March.
Mr Clergeau pointed out that votes in European Parliament committees and votes in plenary “reflect quite different dynamics and rationales”. In plenary session, the complexity of national positions, sensitivities and specificities is evident (see EUROPE 13777/5).
He felt that the context of the agricultural movement could have an impact on this text, particularly with regard to plant patents.
According to him, the agreement is “not good”. Mr Clergeau would have liked to see measures to fully assess changes appearing in the plant and determine whether or not these changes were the ones expected or not. The final compromise only assesses the presence of chimeric proteins, but not chimeric RNA (an essential molecule in all living cells), new allergens or other elements.
As far as sustainability criteria, European Parliament gave in, according to him, and finally obtained a negative list with two points: the exclusion of NGT plants resistant to herbicides and the exclusion of NGT plants that produce a toxin which kills insects. This applies to products manufactured in the EU as well as to imported products. Mr Clergeau welcomes these advances, but believes that “we’re a long way from the positive list based on sustainability criteria that we had envisioned“. Furthermore, “we’ve achieved nothing, or almost nothing, on everything concerning the technical traceability” of NGTs.
Finally, he criticised patent-related elements of the text, which entail a risk of concentrating the sector in the hands of large international players and, consequently, destroying Europe’s network of small and medium-sized seed companies. One idea considered had been to establish a platform for granting licences to give small seed companies access to genetic resources under fair conditions, but faced with opposition from the EU Council, “we reverted to a voluntary approach”. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)