Brussels, 02/02/2000 (Agence Europe) - What is the precautionary principle, and when and how should it be used, both in the European Union and internationally? These are the controversial questions, nurtured by public and consumer mistrust of policy makers' aptitude to take the measures needed to prevent any unacceptable risks for their health or the environment, that the Commission is trying to answer in its Communication adopted on Wednesday on the use of the precautionary principle (see yesterday's EUROPE p.15). With this document, that will soon be published in the Official Journal, the Commission wants to inform all interested parties of how it interprets this principle, the way it implements or intends implementing it, and establish guidelines to that end.
Under the terms of the Treaty, the precautionary principle, is prescribed - without being defined - with the sole goal of protecting the environment: but in practice, its field of application is much broader. The Commission considers the precautionary principle to be an integral part of a structured approach to risk-analysis based on risk-assessment, risk-management and risk-communication, and that it is particularly relevant for risk-management. Setting out from that, it believes the Community decision-makers must turn to it when an objective scientific assessment of the potentially hazardous effects of products or substances on the environment or human, animal or plant health reveals that there are sound reasons to fear that these risks are incompatible with the high level of protection chosen for the Community. It will therefore have to be applied in cases where scientific data gathered are inadequate or not very conclusive to exclude such risks.
So as to avoid unwarranted use of the precautionary principle as a disguised form of protectionism, the Commission stipulates that measures that may be taken in the name of this principle must: a) be proportional to the level of protection sought; b) not introduce discrimination; c) be compatible with similar measures already adopted; d) rest on a cost/benefit analysis, compared to the possible advantages and costs of a lack of action; e) be reviewed in the light of newly available scientific data and maintained as long as they have not been proven to be unnecessary.
Considering that, like other members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Union has the right to set the level of protection it deems appropriate, the Commission recalls that implementation of the precautionary principle is an essential element of its policy and that the choices it makes in virtue of the principle will continue to guide the stances it will defend at international level, as was recently the case in negotiations over the protocol on bio-security regulating world trade in living genetically modified organisms, in the framework of the United Nations Convention on Bio-diversity.
The Communication that the Commission adopted today complements the recently published White Paper on food safety.