Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-13-Speech-1-176"
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"en.19991213.11.1-176"2
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"I do not know about you, but its seems to me that this evening is rather reminiscent of the Titanic. I have a horrible feeling that the whole ship is sinking. I hope that I am not right, but if we go on like this, perhaps we should join in a chorus of "Nearer my God to Thee", standing in the middle and singing it.
I hope, when the Commission replies, that the Commissioner will be kind enough to reply to the debate in English. It is extremely helpful when he does so, because this is an issue where a number of us have constituents who are very anxious to find out what is going on, and it is extremely helpful if he can reply in English if at all possible.
This is a deeply unsatisfactory issue dealt with unsatisfactorily by the Commission. Parliament's Environment Committee has put together a short resolution in order that Members can debate it with the Commission and we can attempt to get some clarification from them. It is unsatisfactory in the approach that the Commission has had to adopt and indeed in the content of the proposal coming before us. What we are doing this evening is commenting on a draft Commission regulation. There is no chance for the European Parliament to propose amendments to it through our normal procedures. We can only object and if we do object, that would hold up agreement. We do not really want to hold up such agreement, so we are taking this opportunity of having this debate.
We underline in the motion before you that we believe that this kind of issue should be dealt with in future through the codecision procedure. In fact, members of the committee find that the whole European Union approach to genetically modified food at the moment is in a rather confused state. Indeed we have a number of Commissioners who seem to be dealing with it, although Mr Liikanen is taking the lead. Legislation has been brought forward piecemeal. We have already had the novel foods regulation, but this is another part of the jigsaw. We feel that consumers may well be very confused about exactly what the European Union is proposing and how it will impact on them and on the food that they eat and the labels that they read. There is still nothing from the European Commission on the labelling of genetically modified material when it is contained in animal feed and we look forward to proposals on that.
On the whole, the committee received rather conflicting signals about the recommended maximum 1% content level. I really would ask the Commissioner when he replies to the debate to take this opportunity to clarify as publicly as possible why the European Commission has chosen the 1% level.
I understand that the Commission was under considerable pressure to go for a much higher level, 5% was the level which some American interests wanted the Commission to go for. On the other hand, there are some members of the committee who argue that a 0.1% level would have been perfectly feasible and pointed out that some supermarket chains around the European Union are insisting on a 0.1% level. I believe that the Commission's answer to this is that the 1% level is the only level at which we can be absolutely sure that the testing methods are available so that they can be firmly based in Community law. If that is the case, then how can supermarkets chains argue to us that a 0.1% level is perfectly feasible? Are the testing methods available, and what about the supermarkets claims?
The committee was so unhappy about this that it wanted to make absolutely clear to the European Commission that it wants to review of this proposal in short order. I hope that the Commission will comment on the feasibility of this. If the 1% level is found to be perfectly technically feasible, there are many in the Community who want to make sure that it is possible to review that level downwards, and we would like to have the Commission's view on that.
Finally, we turn to the question of enforcement and paragraph 6 of the resolution. Can the Commission state absolutely certainly that it is going to be possible to apply this maximum 1% content level to very small quantities of ingredients? As we read the regulation, it says that the maximum 1% level may apply to ingredients of a product, not necessarily simply to the product as a whole. If that is the case, we are looking at very small quantities indeed, and there are a number of members of the committee who feel that essentially this proposal that we are looking at tonight is unenforceable and represents another occasion where the European Commission has produced something which looks good but which will not actually work out in practice."@en1
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