After decades of pushing nations to surrender more power to the EU, the bloc is pulling back on efforts to assert its authority over one contentious issue, genetically modified foods.
On Tuesday, the European Commission will formally propose giving back to national and local governments the freedom to decide whether to grow such crops.
The new policy is aimed at overcoming a stalemate that has severely curtailed the market for biotech seeds in Europe for years. Only two crops, produced by agricultural giant Monsanto and chemical company BASF, are sold for cultivation in Europe.
The new flexibility is aimed at opening up markets in countries like the Netherlands, where governments are broadly favorable toward growing and trading biotech products, while countries like Austria, where the products are unpopular, can maintain a ban.
Far from celebrating the new approach, the growing global industry as well as some farmers themselves are extremely wary.
“So many different authorities suddenly doing so many different things risks sending a message to successful growers in Africa and Asia that authorities are unsure how to deal with biotech,” said Nathalie Moll, the secretary general of EuropaBio, an industry group.
She said it also remained to be seen whether the proposals would conform with WTO rules.
The US and the EU are still trying to resolve a dispute over genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and related issues after the trade organization in 2006 ruled against Europe’s de facto ban. Washington could still retaliate in that case.
The Office of the US Trade Representative declined to comment on the new approach, but said it would be on the agenda at a meeting with European officials this month.
Despite “some progress” in recent months, the US “still has a number of concerns,” said Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, a spokeswoman for the US trade representative, adding they include “a substantial backlog of pending biotech applications, and bans adopted by individual EU member states on biotech products approved at the EU level.”
A critical factor behind the proposed change in Europe is a growing frustration with the current system, under which meetings between government officials and ministers routinely end in deadlock. That forces unelected officials at the European Commission to make the final decision on authorizing biotech products.
The commission has found itself repeatedly pressured on one side by the US and the WTO to follow the recommendations of its own scientific authorities and enforce the use of approved products and on the other by countries like Austria and environmental groups that believe the EU authorities are too eager to promote newfangled technologies.
Under the new proposals, the commission would continue to make the approvals itself, but leave it to members and local and regional authorities to decide what they want to grow at home.
Whether the new rules will win the necessary approval from EU governments and the European Parliament still is unclear.
In an unlikely alliance, the Austrian and Dutch governments first made the proposal in 2008.
The Dutch were eager to ease tensions over biotech crops with the US and other trading partners, and to ensure continuing imports of animal feeds that contain biotech products.
Animal farming is a big part of the economy in the Netherlands, which, in turn, is a major exporter of meat and dairy products. Dutch researchers are also involved in developing biotech products.
The Austrians supported the changes as a way to keep its national ban on growing any such crops without facing regular challenges from the EU authorities.
Other countries, though, have expressed concern about setting a precedent that could undermine European integration. The crisis this year over how to supervise the finances of the 16 nations that use the euro already has highlighted the limits to European cooperation.
“If the agricultural policy is common, why wouldn’t the policy of cultivation of GMOs be?” Spanish Environment Minister Elena Espinosa asked.
In addition, Belgium, which has just taken over the rotating EU presidency, is concerned that a ban by a single country could put the entire bloc in danger of facing retaliatory trade sanctions.
Even farmers that favor biotech crops are concerned that the commission is offloading a problem on them — and that the issue could become even more politicized than it is now.
“The Welsh and the Scots are vehemently opposed to genetically modified crops,” said Philip Lodge, who would like to farm biotech sugar beets in Yorkshire, northern England. “With these conflicts of interest so close to home, I just don’t see how I’ll be able to grow GM in practice.”
Other farmers warned that the change risked stirring up new confrontations with activists, who in the past have destroyed crops planted in trial fields.
Last week, in the latest example of the persistent differences, countries failed for a third time to break a deadlock over whether to allow imports of six varieties of bioengineered corn for food and feed.
That leaves the decision up to the EU’s health commissioner, John Dalli, who is expected to approve the products in coming months. He caused a furor among environmentalists in March when he approved cultivation of a biotech potato by BASF — the first such approval in more than a decade in Europe.
In the European Parliament, among those reviewing the proposed new rules will be Jose Bove, a French sheep farmer who captured attention a decade ago for ransacking a McDonald’s to protest the influence of multinational corporations. Since then he has served time in a French prison for damaging biotech crops.
He is now a deputy chairman of the agriculture committee at the European Parliament, where he was elected as a member of the Green Party.
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