| Author (Person) | Carstens, Karen |
|---|---|
| Series Title | European Voice |
| Series Details | Vol.10, No.22, 17.6.04 |
| Publication Date | 17/06/2004 |
| Content Type | News |
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Date: 17/06/04 By Karen Carstens BY SEEKING to safeguard its own rules on how to handle genetically modified organisms the EU could be blocking attempts to address them at grassroots level in central European and Eurasian countries, green activists and legal experts have said. This is why the debate on how to include GMOs in the 1998 Aarhus Convention on environmental openness has been so sluggish, they claim. Brokered by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the convention guarantees citizens the right to information, participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters. This means that companies and governments could come under greater pressure to disclose environmental information. The convention is unique, according to UNECE, as it “links environmental rights and human rights“. But GMOs were initially omitted from the convention, agreed the same year that EU member states imposed a de facto moratorium on the authorization of new GM products pending the adoption of new rules on traceability and labelling that entered into force in April. To address this legal loophole in the agreement, a working group on GMOs was convened. But little progress has been made after several gatherings and it is now running out of time ahead of a key 'meeting of the parties' next May in Italy to agree on a clear proposal. “This really is a 'make it or break it' meeting,” said Marc Pallemaerts, a professor of environmental law at Brussels' VUB university and chairman of the meeting of the parties to the Aarhus Convention. “That's the only opportunity in the next three years to change the convention,” he said. The trouble is, green campaigners and legal experts allege, that several mostly 'old' member states do not seem too keen on solving the GMO- public participation question via the Aarhus Convention. The European Commission has argued that GMOs are already adequately addressed via the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. An agreement attached to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity adopted in 2000, it seeks to safeguard flora and fauna “from the potential risks posed by living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology“. Several member states, notably France, have in past meetings of the Aarhus GMO working group taken this tack as well, according to observers. “There has been some very bizarre behaviour from France,” said Yves Lador, the envoy to the UN in Geneva for Earthjustice, a US non-profit law firm that takes up environmental cases in the public interest. French representatives were being “totally obstructive” by “really blocking” any efforts to reach a consensus, he said. The UK and Germany have also been sceptical, he added, although it was mostly France which was “bullying” participants on the working group from Armenia and Georgia by insisting that the Cartagena Protocol was the answer. Still, Lador added, at the last such meeting in March, “the French were more constructive“. As for the EU, “it is feeling very uneasy with the discussions in the WTO”, he said, referring to the US-led complaint against the EU's now technically lifted GM moratorium which World Trade Organization officials began discussing earlier this month. Moreover, he warned, a new complaint could soon be launched from Washington on the EU's GM labelling law. “We know that the GMO industry in the US is thinking of going to the WTO on the labelling process,” said Lador. “The EU is a little bit embarrassed,” he added. “The idea is to keep things as they are in the Aarhus process - that is unsettled - to keep the public out of the GMO process.” John Hontelez, secretary-general of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), said that Aarhus has mainly entered into force due to ratification from countries in central Europe and the Caucasus. “The former Soviet countries,” he claimed, “are the target of the GMO industry,” so it is important that they “can organize real public participation procedures” - more important perhaps than in 'the West'. “Environment ministries by themselves find it extremely difficult to push through such a procedure - unless they have an international treaty,” he said. “It is essential,” Hontelez added, “but the EU will say 'we have our own rules, and they have worked'.” The EEB chief said that, while Germany, France and the UK have been among those “putting the brakes” on the inclusion of GMOs in the convention, Italy, Austria and Ireland “do not like the EU position, but don't speak up“. Meanwhile, he said, the Commission has suggested to countries from eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia that guidelines on GMOs could be developed. “Our experience is that guidelines are nice but will not be enforced. There is a big difference between guidelines and conventions,” Hontelez said. There are three legal options to include GMOs in the Aarhus Convention: amend the convention, include GMOs in an annex or draw up a whole new protocol attached to it. Hontelez refers to the latter option as “shooting a mosquito with a cannon“. The Commission in October 2003 adopted three draft laws that aim to put the convention into practice by requiring EU institutions to respond to public requests for specific environmental information. Pallemaerts warned that relying on Cartagena instead of Aarhus was a bad idea, as the former was a global treaty while the latter focuses exclusively on a wider Europe with a stronger public participation compenent. |
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