Brussels / Washington, 05/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - The potentially decisive meeting that the White House had planned to devote to the GMO affair early this week, has been postponed "sine die". "We learnt that this inter-ministerial meeting had been cancelled, last night. We don't know why", European sources told us on Tuesday. Punctuating years of growing pressure against the maintenance of the European embargo on genetically modified organisms, American Trade Representative Robert Zoellick recently took a stance in favour of initiating a dispute procedure in Geneva in view of securing a ruling by the World Trade Organisation that would force the Europeans to open up their door to "Frankenstein food". Whereas calls for this are multiplying within Congress, on the European side, the Commission has just recalled, via David Byrne, that the ball was in the court of the Member States, some of which continue to be reluctant faced with the possibility of now lifting the moratorium in force since 1998. The Commissioner for health and consumer protection also warned Washington against a likely hardening of consumer opposition should anyone try to force on them something they manifestly do not want (see EUROPE of 31/01/, p.14).
In Washington this week, Franz Fischler, who took advantage of the visit to "put across the European point of view" to his counterpart for Agriculture, Ann Veneman and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, considered that it was "the right moment to tell the responsible authorities what we see as the negative consequences of an American complaint to Geneva". "The question could be asked: would it not be worth waiting three or four months? You will then see our system works", and "we could avoid a lot of damage on both sides of the Atlantic", he said, stressing to his interlocutors that the EU was "in the last stages of its legislative process" (the future traceability and labelling measures). British Agriculture Minister, Margaret Beckett, who also met Ms. Veneman, referred to "other sufficient interests" to dissuade the Americans of having the WTO intervene in this affair, and her Belgian counterpart, Annemie Nyets warned against the risk of a complaint triggering a "major battle".
On the American side, althouth they are still playing - if seriously - with the idea of a complaint to the WTO, the quest for allies has begun. "I'm totally confident that there will be others", said Peter Allgeier, the Deputy Trade Representative, refusing to say more, other than: "Simply think of powerful exporters of farm produce". Passing through Geneva, on Wednesday, Mr. Allgeier said that he was in consultations with potential allies and believed that they would not have to decide to go it alone.
Byrne calls on Member States to lift moratorium
At a press conference, Commissioner David Byrne confirmed on Wednesday that the United States had not referred a complaint to the WTO to protest against the continued moratorium. According to him the Americans would not by carrying out their threat in the coming days. Mr. Byrne once more called on the Member States concerned to lift the moratorium, recalling that the results of a scientific study had proven that GMOs were no hazard to human health and that, "at Community level, we have put in place legislation on the point of being finalised to ensure that information used is placed at the disposal of the public at large so that people know whether or not they want to consume products containing GMOs". He added that the EU had also tried hard to guarantee the traceability of the products too, which was "indispensable" to "ensure the credibility of the labelling". "We have taken account of the opinions of the scientists and put legislation in place … now let's turn over the page! The conclusion of all that is that we must lift the moratorium", he declared.