EU citizens seek to freeze GM crop cultivation
Environmental campaigners hope the response to an online petition can clear the way for a new citizen charter on GM created under the Lisbon Treaty.
If a million citizens from a broad base of EU countries lend their names to moves to change the law, the European Commission is obliged to consider the grievance.
Campaigners were planning to hand the petition file, which was launched in March, to commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso this week, and to seek a moratorium while independent ethical and scientific experts consider the impact of GM cultivation.
But Frederic Vincent, spokesman for EU health commissioner John Dalli, said: “It’s out of the question to halt the processes for authorising cultivation or commercialisation.”
Authorisation is being sought for 15 GM crops. Environment ministers from around the EU will try next week to settle controversial commission plans allowing individual EU nations to opt out of cultivation in exchange for not blocking crops’ development on other territories. EU Health Commissioner John Dalli said he will “take delivery” of the signatures. But he stressed the mechanics of the new EU citizens initiative procedure have “not yet been decided on by the European parliament”.
A facility for a million EU citizens to force the bloc to listen to their voice was an innovation under the Lisbon Treaty.
Germany’s Norbert Rottgen warned that acceptance of GMs on a state-by-state basis would “mean de facto that we do not have a single market”.
