Individual EU countries could soon decide on GM within their own borders (Image: Katja Kircher/Getty)

European Union member states may soon be allowed to ban cultivation of genetically modified crops on their soil even if these crops have already been given approval to be grown in the EU. The European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, is expected to vote on the matter on 13 January, with the outcome being rubber-stamped later in the month by environment ministers within the Council of the EU.

If voted through as anticipated, the amendments to a 2001 directive are likely to come into force by June next year. They will mean that countries that want to ban GM crops are no longer obliged to provide scientific evidence to the European Food Safety Authority that the crops will damage the environment or human health. Instead, countries will be able to exclude GM crops for somewhat arbitrary reasons, for example, over fears that material from GM crops will adulterate organic produce and make it unsaleable, or simply that the presence of GM crops may provoke demonstrations that disrupt public order.

Lobby groups that oppose GM crops are broadly pleased with the new powers countries will have.


“The list of concerns in European society about GM crops is not only based on scientific considerations and environmental harm, but also risks for small farmers such as contamination,” says Friends of the Earth’s Mute Schimpf. But she is concerned that the new provision allows biotechnology companies to lobby governments over possible bans.

“Arbitrary ban”

Backers of GM say the amendments create a dangerous precedent for international free trade and innovation, by allowing products scientifically judged by European regulators to be safe to be banned by individual nations. “Our industry has a serious problem with arbitrary bans on safe products,” says Beat Spaeth, agriculture spokesman for EuropaBio, a pan-European association representing biotechnology companies.

The proposed measures were conceived five years ago to overcome repeated deadlocks between countries backing and opposed to GM crops. Giving countries the right to ban them unilaterally and without scientific justification was seen as a way to break the logjam, speed up approvals of new GM crops and allow farmers in pro-GM countries such as the UK, Spain and Sweden to begin growing them.

But Spaeth says that there is nothing in the new arrangements to break approval logjams or accelerate take-up of the technology by pro-GM countries. “It makes it easier to ban GM crops, but not easier to approve them,” he says.

Only two GM crops have been approved for EU farmers to grow, and only one is still on the market: an insect-resistant maize called MON810, approved in 1998. No more have been approved since, and many GM companies simply withdrew applications as the logjam mounted. Only eight GM crops remain “in the queue”, all of them maize, says Spaeth.

By contrast, at least 50 GM crop varieties have been cleared for import into Europe, mainly cotton for clothes and varieties of soybean, oilseed rape and maize for animal feed. But even here there are ominous developments, says Spaeth. He says that Europe’s process for approving new varieties for import has stalled, with 12 products held up for more than a year.