Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-24-Speech-2-014"
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I too would like to start by thanking our rapporteur, Mr Sjöstedt, for the good work he has done on this report on the implementation of the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety. As the Commissioner has repeatedly observed, he has obviously studied the original document with great care, and this has enabled him to add even greater precision to certain items in the Commission proposal, which is in any case essentially a good one.
The implementation of this Protocol has mainly to do with seeking something long overdue, namely rules for EU exports of living GMOs to third countries, and in this practicability is of the utmost necessity. We have to bring into being a realistic and usable piece of legislation. It is precisely for this reason that I consider it wrong and, indeed, damaging for us to want to use this report on the implementation of the Cartagena Protocol to intervene in ongoing legislative processes. By this I mean the proceedings relating to genetically modified foodstuffs and feedingstuffs and their labelling and traceability. It was only a few weeks ago that we debated their first reading and had a plenary vote on them. The decision was a close-run thing, in other words, there were divergent opinions, and we are at present waiting to hear what position the Council takes on this.
The proposal for a directive on environmental liability is also only now being debated in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, with little prospect of any decision on it, which means that anything this report lays down on the issue of liability for the traceability of GMOs and additives must be emphatically rejected. These issues have nothing to do with the transposition of the Cartagena Protocol into Community law, and so I have decided to bring in a number of requests for separate voting in order to correct the result of the vote in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, which I believe to lack objectivity. Nor initially did the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development take the right approach, in that it, in its opinion, sought to extend the derogations from the documentary and information procedures for living GMOs in transit and in closed systems to organisms genetically modified for the purposes of research and development, that is, to field trials under Part B of the Release Directive 2001/18.
This was however, in my estimation, more of an inaccuracy, or rather a misunderstanding, as such a course of action would not be justifiable in terms of ethics or morals. This is, in any case, about living GMOs, as yet at the research stage, and thus not guaranteed to be safe. If we allow GMOs that are not permitted within the EU to be exported to third countries for the purposes of field tests – that is, for the purpose of their release into the environment – and do so without the possibility of their being monitored, then we are acting irresponsibly. I say this precisely because I am an advocate of green genetics, as I am sure will have become abundantly clear in discussions to date in this House on the Release Directive and on draft regulations, traceability and the labelling of genetically modified foodstuffs and feedingstuffs.
A derogation from the requirement for documentation of living GMOs intended for release in third countries would mean that we were helping to send research into a lengthy foreign exile outside Europe, whether the EU's moratorium remained in place or were lifted, as it would be, in every instance, much simpler to engage in research anywhere other than in the EU. We must see to it, though, that we make research within the European Union possible again and move it forwards, an incidental consideration being that we will then be able to monitor what it is up to.
I am therefore, together with my colleague Mrs Emilia Müller, introducing two new amendments on behalf of my group, namely Amendments Nos 50 and 51 to Article 4, which have already been mentioned. The first of these amendments seeks to restrict derogations from the documentary and information procedures to GMOs in transit and in closed systems. This is where we really need these derogations in order not to hamper research, and I am convinced that fear of possible mishaps in this area, such as those that might result from containers fracturing in transit, is exaggerated. Were it not so, I would not dare cross the street, get into a car, or board an aeroplane, as the possibility of an accident is always present, even if its likelihood is minimal in the extreme.
The second amendment has to do with a derogation from the information procedure for exports of GMOs to a third country, where this third country has already granted approval for release to another country in respect of the same GMO. These derogations are necessary, as the use of the so-called AIA – Advanced Informed Agreement – as an information procedure in this instance offers no greater security and thus makes transborder movement unnecessarily difficult. I hope you can follow my line of reasoning, and, of course, therefore ask you to support me with your votes."@en1
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