Brussels, 29/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - During Monday's Agriculture Council in Brussels, Austria and Luxembourg were supported, with more or less determination, by Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Belgium, in their requests for Community rules to tackle the issue of coexistence between conventional and genetically modified crops. Some of these States (Greece, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria) also thought it necessary to establish GM-free zones. In opposition, a group of countries made up of Spain, the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands and Ireland felt it better to follow the strategy of the European Commission which, by publishing guidelines on the subject on 23 July, has chosen to leave it up to Member States to legislate (an approach known as 'subsidiarity'). Several Member States have established a link between coexistence and the unintentional presence of GMOs in seed.
The current President of the Council, the Italian Minister Giovanni Alemanno, stressed the fact that these delegations were very cautious on the issue of coexistence. Commissioner Franz Fischler reiterated during the debate and the final press conference that the coexistence issue "has nothing to do" with risk management and the authorisation procedure for GMOs. He said that "we must not close the door to development and the use of biotechnologies in European agriculture", but that at the same time, "when establishing conditions for co-existence, we should make certain that farmers wishing to use conventional or organic production techniques should be able to do so". "The debate on coexistence is important, but we should not exploit it to delay or reject altogether the marketing of GMOs", warned Dr Fischler.
Answering questions from journalists, Dr Fischler said that "most Member States have recognised the validity of our approach to coexistence, which is to allow the issue to be resolved at national level, seeing how best to put into practice on the ground the chosen way of resolving it at national level". "We must set certain basic principles to avoid everybody doing everybody does as they please, and I believe that one of these principles is that of proportionality", said Dr Fischler, explaining: "we can bring in measures to ensure the life expectancy of this coexistence without breaking the principle of proportionality by completely banning GMOs". He admitted that Member States could, in exceptional circumstances (small regions where the holdings are divided up into small parcels of land) and on the basis of agreements between farmers, guarantee the separation between GM and conventional crops.
During the debate, other delegations registered more complex positions on the problem of coexistence and the possibility of defining GM-free zones. Sweden highlighted the need to speed up the adoption of rules on coexistence, and recommended an approach containing several stages (reflections in a Community, then a national, context). France asked for a harmonised approach at Community level in order to guarantee everybody's free choice. Germany saw the need to define criteria allowing "ecologically sensitive" areas to be determined. Whilst supporting the Commission's approach, Finland indicated that it was time to define a legal base, other the EU was running the risk of lagging behind the US in the new technology. "We need a reasonable approach at EU level, and it is too early to decided on GM-free zones", said British Minister Margaret Beckett. Speaking on behalf of the Italian delegation, the President of the Piedmont region, Enzo Guigo, said: "there cannot be coexistence if every Member State cannot adopt all measures judge necessary for separate crops".
On the questions of tolerance thresholds for the unintentional presence of GMOs in seed, which will be re-examined at the end of October by the standing committee on seeds (see EUROPE of Saturday 27 September, p.9, for the results of this committee's first meeting on this subject), Italy felt that the thresholds proposed by the Commission (0.3% for rape, 0.5% for beet, sweetcorn, potatoes, cotton, chicory and tomatoes, 0.7% for soya beans) are "too high" and recalled its position in favour of a lower percentage of 0.1% of GMOs for conventional seeds, and 0% for organic crops. Luxembourg, Belgium and Austria called for levels to be set "as low as possible". Spain, on the other hand, said that the threshold of 0.9% for seed labelling should be respected, and the Netherlands declared that this issue should not have been re-opened. On whether there should be specific tolerance thresholds for organic agriculture, Spain and the Netherlands said "no", contrary to Italy (supported in principle by Greece, Austria and Luxembourg), who evoked the principle of "zero tolerance" for the sector.