Brussels, 25/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - Three European Union cities are candidates for hosting the future European Food Safety Authority. Barcelona and Parma announced their candidacies on Thursday, at the Internal Market Council, following in the footsteps of Helsinki.
Spain's State Secretary for European Affairs Ramon de Miguel highlighted the advantages of the Catalan city, where several major agri-foodstuffs enterprises are headquartered. A site of 4,000 m² would be made available free of charge to the European Agency, in a park of 34,000 m² that already groups several biomedical research centres.
The Italian Minister more modestly stressed the agri-foodstuff traditions of the city of Parma and the quality of certain of the region's leading products, such as ham and parmesan cheese. Finland, which is highly motivated given the stakes of the decision, is eager to host its first Community agency (which is not the case of either Spain or Italy). Finland's European Affairs Minister Kimmo Sasi stated that the absence of large agri-foodstuffs industries and a certain distance from the European Commission were guarantees of greater independence for the agency.
The final decision could be postponed until the start of next year. The European Commission will be coming forward with a legislative proposal on the creation of the European Food Authority as soon as it has the European Parliament's opinion on its White Paper on food safety, expected for October. The matter will then be referred to a summit of European Heads of State and Government, probably under the Swedish Presidency in the first half of 2001.
Greece and Italy want the new agency to state its view on genetically modified organisms
Debate at Thursday's Internal Market Council was held on the basis of a draft report by the Portuguese Presidency on the progress of the Council's work on the European Commission's White Paper. This paper, to be submitted to the Feira European Council on 19 and 20 June, insists upon early establishment of the European Agency, which should become the scientific reference for the entire Union, and which will be charged with risk assessment, among other responsibilities. It presents an action plan to update Union legislation and make it more coherent. Priority areas of intervention include new animal feeds, the effort to combat epizootics, improved food hygiene and maximum limits on contaminants and residues. Certain delegations (Greece, Italy) argued on Thursday for adding to this list of priorities novel foods containing genetically modified organisms.