EUROPA BLUES

Nouvelle atteinte à la liberté nationale et à notre santé ! L'exécutif européen va tenter de contraindre deux pays - l'Autriche et la Hongrie - à lever l'interdiction de cultiver le maïs génétiquement modifié MON 810 de la multinationale américaine Monsanto lors d'une réunion des ministres de l'Environnement à Bruxelles. Elle entend ensuite s'attaquer aux interdictions édictées en France et en Grèce. A lire dans Libé.

 

Cette Europe que nous subissons chaque jour complote en secret pour développer la culture des OGM. C'est ce que révèle The Indépendent. Extrait de l'article et lien pour le lire en entier :

Europe's secret plan to boost GM crop production

By Geoffrey Lean

Sunday, 26 October 2008Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.

The documents – minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments – disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them.

And they show that the leaders want "agricultural representatives" and "industry" – presumably including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto – to be more vocal to counteract the "vested interests" of environmentalists.

News of the secret plans is bound to create a storm of protest at a time when popular concern about GM technology is increasing, even in countries that have so far accepted it.

Public opposition has prevented any modified crops from being grown in Britain. France, one of only three countries in Europe to have grown them in any amounts, has suspended their cultivation, and resistance to them is rising rapidly in the other two, Spain and Portugal.

The embattled biotech industry has been conducting a public relations campaign based round the highly contested assertion that genetic modification is needed to feed the world. It has had some success in the Government, where ministers have been increasingly speaking out in favour of the technology, and in the European Commission, with which its lobbyists have boasted of having "excellent working relations".

The secret meetings were convened by Jose Manuel Barroso, the pro-GM President of the Commission, and chaired by his head of cabinet, Joao Vale de Almeida. The prime ministers of each of the EU's 27 member states were asked to nominate a special representative.

Neither the membership of the group, nor its objectives, nor the outcomes of its meetings have been made public. But The IoS has obtained confidential documents, including an attendance list and the conclusions of the two meetings held so far – on 17 July and just two weeks ago on 10 October – written by the chairman.

The list shows that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany sent close aides. Britain was represented by Sonia Phippard, director for food and farming at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The conclusions reveal the discussions were mainly preoccupied with how to speed up the introduction of GM crops and food and how to persuade the public to accept them.

The modified products have to be approved by the EU before they can be sown or sold anywhere in Europe. But though the Commission officials are generally strongly in favour, European governments are split, causing the Council of Ministers, on which they are represented, to be deadlocked.

In that event the bureaucrats on the Commission wave them through anyway. They are legally allowed to do this, but overruled governments and environmental groups are unhappy.

The conclusions of the first meeting called for the "speeding up of the authorisation process based on robust assessments so as to reassure the public", while the second one added: "Decisions could be made faster without compromising safety."

But the documents also make clear that Mr Barroso is going beyond mere exhortation by trying to get prime ministers to overrule their own agriculture and environment ministers in favour of GM. They report that the chairman "recalled the importance for prime ministers to look at the wider picture", "invited the participants to report the discussions of the group to their heads of governments", and "stressed the importance of drawing their attention to ongoing discussions in the Council [of Ministers]".

Helen Holder of Friends of the Earth Europe said: "Barroso's aim is to get GM into Europe as quickly as possible. So he is going straight to prime ministers and presidents to tell them to step on their ministers and get them into line."

>>> Lire la suite.

Lu dans le Monde. « L'Autorité européenne de sécurité des aliments (AESA) a estimé que l'interdiction française du maïs génétiquement modifié MON810 produit par la firme américaine Monsanto n'était pas justifiée. Elle répondait à une demande de la Commission européenne sur la validité de l'invocation, en début d'année, d'une clause de sauvegarde contre son utilisation en France. "Aucune preuve scientifique, en termes de risques pour la santé humaine ou animale ou pour l'environnement, n'a été fournie pour justifier l'invocation d'une clause de sauvegarde," explique l'AESA. La Commission européenne doit désormais étudier la position de l'AESA. Ensuite, elle ordonnera très probablement à la France de lever son embargo, estiment des sources diplomatiques. » Pour le moment, nos autorités semblent vouloir résister ... mais il ne faut pas rêver. En tout cas ce nouvel épisode démontre à quel point l'Europe c'est bien.