Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-24-Speech-2-016"
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"en.20020924.2.2-016"2
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"Mr President, as is evident from the Commission proposal and Mr Sjöstedt's report, what matters more than anything is for the Cartagena Protocol to be transposed into European legislation and for us to be able to enforce it.
Biosafety and biological diversity are crucial and it is therefore essential that we should ensure that the Protocol becomes EU law. Do we, however, assume that it is sound as it stands, or would we like to use this opportunity to make an exception and be more rigorous than the Protocol?
If it is the intention to implement the Protocol, that is what we should do, and it is important, in my view, for the sake of scientific research in the EU, not to close off the EU unnecessarily in one way or another from the rest of the world or make the work unnecessarily more difficult than in the rest of the world.
Genetic engineering is a ground-breaking discipline and strikes me as very useful. As with all technologies, of course, the question is how it is employed. In addition, I believe that trade is necessary and boundaries need to be crossed so as to allow scientists to do their research. This is quite simply how science works, and as far as I can see, science hinders this research as little as possible. We must do what is needed and leave out what is not needed. Accordingly, I am of the opinion that we should implement the Protocol and that the report contains a few elements which are not conducive to this process.
Further to discussions on the GMO reports which were held a couple of weeks, or even months, ago, I have already pointed out that I personally have a problem with traceable and non-traceable products, in other words, things which can, and cannot, be discovered. We have no intention of re-entering the debate, as it has already been held, but my group will definitely be endorsing Amendments Nos 51 and 50. This topic has been discussed among the Christian-Democrats. When restricted use and transit are at issue, the Protocol provides for an exception. I can therefore not see why we cannot do the same.
Secondly, if the receiving country has already admitted GMOs, it is beyond me why we should re-apply for the same product to be imported and duplicate all the paperwork. These are unnecessary restrictions, in my view. It is, of course, true – and this is something I welcome – that we should provide the developing countries with as much information as possible, allowing them to be able to reach a sound verdict.
What matters most is that we transpose the Protocol into EU legislation, but just as important is for the European Union not to become an island where little or no research may, or can, be carried out in this technology, which could be very useful in my opinion, both to us and to the people in the developing countries."@en1
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