Members of the European Parliament reject Commission plan on GMO opt-outs

Food safety commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis failed on Wednesday (28 October) to convince the European Parliament to adopt a plan which would give member states the power to ban the use of genetically modified food ingredients.

In a Strasbourg plenary vote Wednesday afternoon 579 of 751 MEPs said the Commission should withdraw it, which the Commission refused to do. Following the Commission’s refusal, the plenary voted again, inching towards unanimity, with 619 MEPs rejecting the plan.

By rejecting the legislative proposal, the parliament put one of two required nails in the proposal’s coffin. The plan needs approval from both national governments and the European Parliament before it can become law.

It followed a debate in which the proposal received widespread criticism, from all corners of the political spectrum.

The Commission wants to allow national governments to opt-out from the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) even if they have an EU-wide stamp of approval. Despite the EU’s scientific authorisation process, many European citizens are sceptical of the safety of GMOs.

But the Commission’s plan was written off from left to right as “wrong”, “a serious mistake”, “half-baked”, “shoddy work”, full of “legal loopholes” and posing a “risk of undermining the single market”.

MEPs could not see how national governments could ban GMOs that are allowed in other EU states, since there is freedom of movement in the bloc.

“If we now go back to national authorisations, we would have to have border controls again. We have enough discussions about border controls”, said German centre-right MEP Albert Dess, referring to thepressure migration has put on the EU’s internal borders.

Green MEP Bart Staes from Belgium also noted he could not see the plan work in practice, considering that the EU imports genetically modified animal food for European livestock.

“If a boat of 50,000 tonnes of [genetically modified] soya arrives in the port of Antwerp, but France has decided to opt out, how will a truck be prevented from travelling to France?”, Staes said.

MEPs said governments will miss the tools to enforce a ban.

“We’d have to have checks at every farm”, German centre-left MEP Susanne Melior noted.

Other MEPs criticised the lack of an impact assessment, saying the proposal was no example of “better regulation”, which the Commission of president Jean-Claude Juncker promised would be a guiding principle when it started work almost one year ago…

@ MEPs reject Commission plan on GMO opt-outs: