July 13, 2010
In a move which aims to resolve a 12-year deadlock that has resulted in a virtual freeze on the approval of GM farming, the European commission will propose allowing pro-GM states such as Spain and the Netherlands to increase production, while also allowing others such as Germany and Austria to maintain restrictions.
The rare instance of Brussels handing back power to individual nations will likely present Britain's government with a delicate decision, caught between a robust GM industry lobby and a vocal protest movement.
While making it easier for states to ban GM crops, giving them the option of citing non-scientific grounds such as socio-economic or cultural reasons, Brussels is expecting a quid pro quo from opponents, that they will end what is seen as a strategy of stalling health and environmental approval by the EU.
"While it's up to member states to decide, we expect them to be more flexible from where they are now in terms of authorisation at the EU level," said one commission official.
The EU proposals are designed to appeal to both camps. On the one hand, they give anti-states broader rights to restrict GM crop cultivation on their own soil, in exchange for them softening their opposition to approval elsewhere. Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, and Luxembourg have banned cultivation; Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Britain are in favour.
"The momentous thing the commission is doing is a very simple addition to the GM legislation – one single article to allow an opt-out for political reasons," said Carel du Marchie Sarvaas, of EuropaBio, the biotechnology lobbyists. "We hope this will break the deadlock over GM, but it's missing a defence of fundamental principles of choice. In some countries there might be more cultivation, but in many it will mean the end of the right of farmers to grow them at all."