Brussels, 30/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - Although a majority backed Austria, which is keeping safeguard measures against two EU authorised GMOs in place, EU Environment Ministers were unable to reject, by qualified majority, Commission proposals to require Austria to lift national measures banning GM maize T25 and MON 810 for human and animal consumption.
The European Commission, then, will be required to decide, and it would not be a surprise if it were to go against the views of a large majority of member states. This is one of the paradoxes of the comitology procedure, which operates in the EU for GMO marketing authorisation.
Austria would have preferred the vote to have take place at a later date (in December, before the Environment Council of 20 December) to give it the time to provide further scientific studies justifying, it says, the maintenance in place of its safeguard measures. The European Commission, for its part, did not see things in the same way, with the pressure of the 21 November deadline, set by a decision of the WTO Panel in September 2006, urging the EU to comply with its own legislation governing the marketing of GMOs by that date. Beyond this deadline, the United States, Argentina and Canada, which took the complaint to the WTO, could, within two months, act to have sanctions imposed on the EU for damages suffered.
To avoid the rejection of its proposals by member states, as happened in December 2006, the Commission was careful to present ministers with two amended proposals this time, limited to the use of the two GMO strains for uses in food and not for cultivation. This change clearly affected the outcome of the vote.
Invited by the Portuguese presidency to decide on the amended proposals, 15 member states, representing 191 votes, voted against (Germany, Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Poland and Slovakia), only four member states, representing 56 votes, voted for (Estonia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden), and eight member states, representing 98 votes, abstained (Belgium, Bulgaria, Spain, Finland, Portugal, Slovenia, Romania and the Czech Republic). The fact remains, however, that with 191 votes out of a total of 345, the required qualified majority to reject the Commission proposals was not reached.
Announcing this situation to the press, Francisco Nunes Correia, the minister for the environment, urban planning and regional development in Portugal (chairing the session) simply pointed out that, “the Council has not been able to reach a decision on opposing the European Commission's position”. A journalist asked him if the EU was not sending out a confused message on GMOs and the Chair acknowledged that, “the European message is ambiguous” and that the high number of voices heard against the Commission proposals was creating a negative feeling. He did explain, however, that two different attitudes were hiding behind this vote: the attitude of member states that always vote against GMOs and that of member states that vote against, out of respect for the decision of the member state concerned. Correia added that, “one attitude involves the GMOs themselves, the other the decision mechanism”. This subject provoked a brief exchange of views between ministers on the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) authorisation procedures. At the request of Italy, which made a heartfelt appeal for EFSA procedures to be re-examined and for all new authorisation to be suspended as long as the examination was ongoing, the Environment Council agreed to tackle this point after the vote on GMOs. This does not involve decision-making. Most member states appreciate the Italian initiative. As a whole, member states wanted EFSA to be able to carry its missions out forcefully, independently and efficiently.
Commenting on the result of the vote on Austrian safeguard measures, Stavros Dimas, the Commissioner for the Environment, declared: “the Commission has clearly taken note of the concerns expressed and will draw up a balance sheet before deciding what needs to be done. An assessment of the implications for the WTO will also be made, whilst keeping to the spirit of the date of 21 November”. Impossible at this stage to get the Commissioner to say more on the what kind of decision will be reached. Stavros Dimas, nonetheless, added, “T25 maize is only used in Europe, as for MON 810, the problem only affects Austria”. Is this a circumspect way of saying that damages in a third country will be minimal? At the session, Austrian ministers, Josef Pröll, criticised the idea of the Commission being able to take a measures, on its own and against the majority opinion of member states. However, he did welcome the fact that the European Commission had so far renounced the idea of proposing the cultivation of incriminated GMOs. Pröll said that this in fact marked a victory. (A.N.)