Belgium certain to face legal action over dioxin

Date: 17/06/1999

By Tim Jones

THE European Commission will take a formal decision next week on whether to take legal action against Belgium over the country's dioxin-in-food scandal.

However, Acting Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler has already made it clear that proceedings will be launched. The only question is whether the challenge will be limited to Belgium's failure to alert its EU partners to the scare quickly enough, or extended to include a failure to implement adequate safety measures. "It is clear there will be proceedings," said Fischler after a meeting of EU farm ministers earlier this week.

Commission officials said yesterday (16 June) that the Belgian authorities had been asked to respond to an initial report into the scandal, which led to a resounding defeat for Jean-Luc Dehaene's government in the country's general election last weekend. A decision on what action to take against Belgium will then be taken by the full Commission next Wednesday (23 June).

The scare sparked angry clashes between Acting Consumer Commissioner Emma Bonino and Belgian Health Minister Luc van den Bossche at an emergency European Parliament meeting. Bonino said the Belgian authorities had not "handled this crisis in a positive way", adding that the action taken to combat it had been "partial, sometimes incomplete and sometimes contradictory". But Van Den Bossche vehemently denied that the Belgian response had been chaotic, adding: "The Commission did not want to listen to us."

Some MEPs demanded compensation from the Belgian authorities, the setting up of a parliamentary inquiry similar to that held over mad cow disease, and tighter controls over animal feed production.

The Belgian authorities have accused the Commission of over-reacting by banning the sale of milk and dairy products from suspect farms. EU scientists this week recommended screening those farms with "appropriately sensitive methods" to establish whether milk from their herds had been contaminated, before deciding what further action should be taken.