Environment - GMOs
- On: 04.07.2008
At the informal environment meeting, the French Presidency is launching a working group to strengthen the assessment of GMOs at European level.
Following a political agreement reached on 5 June on their proposals to strengthen European GMO assessment, Jean-Louis Borloo, the French Minister for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning (Regional Development), and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the French Minister of State for Ecology, launched a friends of the presidency group whose work should finish for the Council of environment ministers on 4 and 5 December next.
In conjunction with the European Commission, the group will address the following points: strengthening GMO assessment on safety to human health and the environment, the timeliness and content of a socio-economic assessment, improving the way the assessment is conducted and establishing EU labelling thresholds for the accidental, unavoidable presence of GMOs in seeds.
These targeted studies, which complement the work of the preparatory group set up by the European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, will start at the beginning of September and feed an intermediate policy debate at the Environment Council on 20 October 2008.
Jean-Louis Borloo underlined that: "The approach and its aims correspond to a genuine expectation on the part of the actors, and are directly in line with the undertakings of the Grenelle Environment Conference". According to the French Minister, the active collaboration which is beginning to take place between Member States, the Commission and the European Food Safety Authority means that significant advances can be expected.
Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet believes that there is determination to move forward because citizens’ expectations and our own demands are so great, and hopes for a constructive policy debate at the Council of ministers in October with a view to conclusions at the December Council. Their aim is not only to deepen assessment, but to open a debate on civil society while taking into account socio-economic considerations, thereby heeding certain States’ requests for more subsidiarity, even GMO-free areas.
- Updated: 23.12.2008
