Euro 8m budget “insufficient” warns Food Authority chief

Date: 19/12/02

By Karen Carstens

The European Food Safety Authority has reluctantly accepted a budget of €8.2 million for 2003 from the European Parliament - half the sum that had been provisionally allocated to the fledgling advisory body.

MEPs are holding back half the proposed budget in a bid to speed up the decision on where the EFSA should be sited.

Stuart Slorach, the Swedish chair of EFSA's 15-member management board, said the decision to accept had been taken last week, at the final board meeting of the year, "for procedural reasons only."

"This will enable the sum presently proposed by the Parliament to be made available to us, so that we can cover costs incurred by the Authority from 1 January 2003," he explained.

"The truth is the board considers that this budget is insufficient to properly discharge the Authority's responsibilities as described," he added. "Therefore, the board has requested that the Parliament exercises its own responsibility for food safety by restoring the full budget of €16,493,423.

"This will ensure that the Authority will develop as quickly as possible during 2003 and, only under this scenario, will it be able to effectively serve the interests of European consumers, the food industry, the agricultural sector and other key interests."

EFSA spokesman Andy Stimpson said that as the board got closer to the end-of-year deadline to accept the Parliament's offer, put forward a month ago, they felt their hand was forced.

"They did adopt it, but they did so very unhappily," Stimpson said, adding that the limited funding could prevent the EFSA from hiring the 80 to 90 staff originally foreseen by the end of 2003. It could also potentially hinder the EFSA's goal of being fully operational with a staff of 250 and an annual budget of €40 million after three years, he added.

The EFSA was created in the wake of the BSE mad cow and foot-and-mouth food scares to provide independent scientific advice to the European Commission and member states on all matters with a direct or indirect impact on food safety.

Geoffrey Podger, who currently heads the London-based Food Standards Agency, has been appointed EFSA chairman. He is due to take up this post on 1 February.

EFSA is based temporarily in Brussels pending a decision by EU leaders on its eventual home. The four top contenders are Parma, Helsinki, Barcelona and Lille.

The European Food Safety Authority has reluctantly accepted a budget of €8.2 million for 2003 from the European Parliament - half the sum that had been provisionally allocated to the fledgling advisory body. MEPs are holding back half the proposed budget in a bid to speed up the decision on where the EFSA should be sited.