Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-21-Speech-2-288"
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"en.20031021.10.2-288"2
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".
Mr President, first of all I would like to thank the European Parliament for its collaboration on this proposal. In particular, I would like to pay tribute to the rapporteur, Mrs Ferreira, for her work on this dossier.
That leaves Stevia and the sweetener extracted from this plant, stevioside, which has also been thoroughly examined by the Scientific Committee on Food. The committee has serious doubts about the safety of stevioside and does not consider it acceptable for use in food. The Commission, therefore, has never proposed this sweetener for authorisation. No new scientific data justifying a re-evaluation of stevioside have been presented to the Commission.
To summarise, the Commission can accept Amendments Nos 1, 2 and 3, but cannot accept Amendment No 4.
There are four proposed amendments to the common position. The first amendment would delete comitology for deciding whether a substance should be considered as a sweetener. The Commission made this proposal as such a decision is of technical nature and can already be taken by comitology for all other food additives, in accordance with existing legislation.
The Commission would have welcomed a formal tool to bring certain substances under the scope of the food additive legislation. This is in the interest of consumer protection.
The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy has refused this, but your rapporteur pointed out that the Commission proposal should be re-considered when the framework legislation on food additives is considered for amendment. Furthermore, the committee has agreed to grant comitology to decide whether a sweetener is used according to Good Manufacturing Practice, as proposed by the Council.
In the spirit of compromise, the Commission can accept this amendment and will, as suggested by your rapporteur, retable its request in the context of the amendment of the framework legislation on food additives.
The second amendment requires the Commission to present a progress report on the re-evaluation of additives in general and, in particular, on the two newly authorised sweeteners. A similar amendment has already been accepted in the context of the amendment of another directive on food additives. Therefore, for the sake of consistency, the Commission can accept this amendment.
The third amendment concerns the transposition of the directive. It introduces a clause for the exhaustion of stocks of products no longer conforming to the directive. For this, a time limit of 24 months after entry into force of the directive, is set. The Commission can accept such a clause and welcomes the fact that it is limited in time. This limitation in time creates legal certainty and facilitates the enforcement of such a clause.
The fourth and final amendment calls for the re-evaluation of the authorisation of two sweeteners – aspartame and stevioside. The Commission cannot accept this amendment for the following reasons. At the request of the Commission, aspartame has been re-evaluated by the Scientific Committee on Food in collaboration with the British and French Food Safety Authorities. To this end, the scientists have reviewed all the scientific literature published since the last opinion on aspartame, amounting to some 150 articles. The resulting opinion, adopted as recently as December of last year, fully reconfirmed the safety of aspartame and that the intake of this sweetener remains well below the acceptable daily intake.
As regards labelling, the presence of aspartame in a foodstuff must be labelled, as for any other additive. Furthermore, the labelling of a foodstuff containing aspartame must bear a particular warning to protect consumers that do not tolerate this sweetener due to a specific metabolic disorder. The Commission, therefore, does not consider it justifiable to proceed with a further re-evaluation of this sweetener or to alter its labelling rules."@en1
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