Brussels, 28/11/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday evening, Agriculture Ministers were still seeking a political agreement on the draft regulation on authorisation procedures and labelling for foodstuffs and animal feed. The Commission and the Presidency were attempting to conciliate the divergent positions of Member States on the three following subjects; 1) the threshold for compulsory labelling of products containing GMOs; 2) the level of tolerance of accidental GMOs in the eleven varieties for which authorisation is blocked by a moratorium; 3 ) the field of application for the regulation. During the public debate, the Danish Presidency's compromise providing for a compulsory labelling threshold from 1% GMOs (as proposed by the Commission) was approved by eight Member States, namely Spain, Belgium, Finland, Greece, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden. France, Luxembourg, Portugal, Austria and Italy pointed out for their part that they supported the European Parliament's opinion recommending a 0.5% threshold. Germany also recommended the lowest possible threshold (between 0.5% and 1%). On the subject of the text's scope, France (mainly supported by Italy, Greece and Belgium) called for GMOs to be excluded from the scope of centralised procedure, which is not accepted by other delegations (like Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden), which support the "one door/one key" approach. Regarding the accidental presence in foodstuffs of GMOs under moratorium, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, Greece and Sweden said they supported the Presidency's proposal providing for a tolerance threshold of 5% during a transitional period of three years. The United Kingdom, Finland and the Netherlands tabled more on a 1% threshold for the accidental presence of GMOS. Austria pressed for 0.1% and Luxembourg held the same position as the EP (no fortuitous presence of GMOs). Germany simply stated it wanted the "lowest possible" threshold. Most Member States were in favour of a centralised authorisation procedure for GMOS (which would give the main role of risk assessment to the European Food Safety Authority), as initially proposed by the Commission.