Brussels, April 12 - European Union regulators vowed on Wednesday to make biotech policy more transparent, hoping to break Europe's years of deadlock on GMOs and make countries and consumers less sceptical about the technology.
Europe has long been split on genetically modified (GMO) policy and the EU's 25 countries consistently clash over whether to approve new varieties for import. The Commission usually ends up issuing a rubberstamp approval, which it may do under EU law.
After years of criticism from green groups and GMO-sceptic countries such as Austria and Greece, the European Commission has decided the EU's leading food safety agency should change its practices and become more transparent.
"The Commission has concluded that some practical improvements could be made to the system...(to) rally member states more fully around these decisions," Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen said.
"They are designed to further reassure member states...and the general public," she told a news briefing.
Europe's consumers are well known for their scepticism, if not hostility, to GMO crops. The biotech industry insists its products are safe and no different to conventional foods.
Earlier on Wednesday, the EU executive held an internal debate on GMO policy at the behest of the two commissioners responsible for environment and food safety, at the front line for any GMO decision that involves a rubberstamp approval.
Both are known to be uneasy about authorising GMOs, for use in food, animal feed or for cultivation, without the backing of most EU states. There has been no consensus since 1998.
On several occasions, there has been a simple majority of EU countries opposed to an approval. But under the EU's complex decision-making process, it is a weighted majority that counts.
In a joint paper, the two commissioners said the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) should assess the potential long-term impact, not just short-term, of specific GMO products.
EFSA should also take scientific opinions from national EU authorities into account in its own GMO risk assessments and, if it overruled those opinions, justifying why it had done so.
Their aim was to make the EU's decision-making on GMO authorisations less contentious and result in fewer EU states voting against applications for approval.
The initiative followed comments last week by Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, who attacked EFSA for flawed GMO risk assessments and said it relied too much on short-term industry data. His comments outraged biotech companies.
EFSA's opinions are required if any country objects to an application to authorise a new GMO product on EU territory. Set up in 2002, the Parma-based agency bases its assessments on data given by the companies that manufacture the GMOs.
NO U-TURN
Stressing that nothing would actually change in the EU's approvals process, Hansen said the Commission wanted to avoid "undue delays" in GMO approvals -- a likely reference to a recent World Trade Organisation case where EU biotech policy was criticised in several areas.
"This is not a U-turn. These are practical ways to enhance the way in which we apply the existing regulatory framework. It's a complementary approach to improve the situation...(we want) to make decision-making on GMOs less controversial."
That looks unlikely given that several countries have national bans on specific GMOs and want to keep them in place.
Austria, traditionally opposed to biotech crops, announced another GMO ban on Wednesday, on imports of GT73 rapeseed made by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, up to the end of 2008.
Last June the Commission's attempts to get the original bans lifted met with a rebuff from EU environment ministers.
Earlier on Wednesday, EFSA gave the green light for five GMO crops and foods that were banned between 1997 and 2000 in Austria, France, Germany, Greece and Luxembourg, saying they posed no risk to human or animal health or the environment.
The three maize and two rapeseed types won EU approval shortly before the start of Europe's six-year moratorium on new GMO authorisations, and are made by Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer.