Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-07-05-Speech-2-067-000"
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"en.20110705.6.2-067-000"2
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"Mr President, it is my pleasure to speak on behalf of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development which also considered this. I would also like to thank all the shadow rapporteurs and Ms Lepage too for her good work in trying to bring both the reports together into an agreed position.
The Commission proposal, of course, is not about whether you are pro-GM or anti-GM. The legislation will give Member States, for the very first time, a proper legal base to ban cultivation of GM crops. It will give them the power to do so. From the Commission’s point of view it will hopefully free up the stalemate in the current authorisation process, and bring to an end Member States’ illegal use of safeguard clauses to introduce bans on GM cultivations, which the European Court of Justice has found against on a number of occasions.
The Agriculture Committee’s approach to this was to rather reluctantly support the Commission’s proposal but with a number of safeguards. We wanted to reinforce the view that the principle of proportionality should be taken into account when Member States think about introducing a ban on GM cultivation. We also believed and insisted that the freedom of choice of consumers and farmers should also be taken into account by Member States when considering a ban, and at no time was any legal advice given to us that this would be at odds with the legal basis we were working on. We also insisted that farmers and growers must be given proper notice of a ban to give them time to adapt, if any Member State decided to introduce a ban either in one of its regions or across the whole of its territory.
We also insisted that Member States introduce as an absolute requirement co-existence measures to protect non-GM growers. Before going further and using the new powers that we are seeking to introduce to put a blanket ban, or a regional ban, in place, the first step should always be that Member States should use co-existence measures as a first step in trying to protect non-GM growers.
Finally, we agreed that Member States could use wider environmental grounds to introduce a ban provided – and this is very important – that they did not undermine the current EU-wide authorisation process. The environmental grounds that they use for introducing a ban must be distinct. Otherwise we threaten to undermine the EU authorisation process which I think is very important.
I hope we can make progress on this issue. I notice the divisions in the Council so I suspect it will not be easy, but I hope that the Commission, Parliament and the Council can make this small adjustment and this giving back of a small amount of power to Member States as a way to break the current logjam, and I hope we can make progress on that."@en1
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