Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-23-Speech-1-131"
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"en.20001023.11.1-131"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, what is the point of turning a technical report into a potential oenological disaster. The determination to amend the directive on the marketing of material for the vegetative propagation of the vine may look like a laudable initiative to update a rather technical text, which is 32 years old. Personally, I find the ’68 vintage rather a fine one, but apparently the Commission has decided to modernise.
The very first lines of the Klass report clearly stress the value, not just the economic value but also the cultural value, of grape and wine production. Everything, then, could be for the best in the best of all possible European wine-growing worlds.
Well, as it turns out, that is not the case. The Commission has taken the opportunity of updating matters to open a Pandora’s box, even though this was something that not one European producer was looking for. While the Commission appears to be overcome with combined GMO and cloning fever, Mrs Klass goes further and goes into convulsions, compounding the GMO issue with all the genotypes she sees all around her. It must be said loud and clear, there was absolutely no need to stuff the articles of this directive with references to directive 90/220, which is currently being revised, unless the intention was to promote genetic manipulation in vines at all costs. And please do not tell me that this was done to anticipate this directive’s being revised or because GM vines do not exist except in laboratory experiments!
Commissioner, Mrs Klass, listen to the opinions of the experts from the
the French National Appellations Institute. The INAO has, on the basis of the information currently available, issued a blanket ban on the use of GMOs in any area whatsoever, which would therefore include, and I quote, genetically modified wine varieties and rootstocks. Would you care to read the Beaune declaration presented by the winegrowers of the Burgundy region? Do you wish to show the industry that Europe is working for better quality and respects the precautionary principle? Commissioner, withdraw the recitals and the articles incorporating GMOs and cloning into this draft. Mrs Klass, take out your amendments and let the relationship between GMOs and genotypes be clarified by the scientists.
There is a second problem area, Mrs Klass. You restrict the practice of grafting to herbaceous cuttings alone. In so doing, you protect what goes on in your own region, but rule out the grafting of hardwood cuttings in the winter period, even though this is the grafting technique that is the most widely used in Europe. This amendment should, therefore, be withdrawn.
In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, in order to respect the precautionary principle in both spirit and letter, should the articles and amendments which I have just mentioned not be withdrawn, then, as the wine growers themselves demand, we would have to fall in with the opinion of Marianne Isler Béguin, and the Committee on the Environment, and vote against them."@en1
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"Institut national des appellations d'origine"1
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