A VICTORY FOR GARDEN ORGANIC BUT THE REGULATIONS WILL BE BACK FOR REDRAFTING AFTER THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS AND THE CAMPAIGN WILL NEED TO CONTINUE.... GARDEN ORGANIC, the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA), Plant Heritage, the Soil Association, and many small seed companies like Real Seeds and Clearspring with the support of their members and customers have won the first stage in the campaign against the EU Plant Reproductive Materials Regulations. A barrage of letters to MEPs and other interested parties from Members of Garden Organic and its allies resulted in the call for over 1400 amendments to the current regulations. Concerns were expressed by many MEPs from across the political divide. Garden Organic and its fellow NGOs across Europe have fought a hard campaign for the rejection of the Plant Reproductive Materials Regulation which aims to control the future supply of seeds, bulbs and other plant material for food plants, ornamentals, trees and even wildflowers! DG SANCO the Directorate for Health & Consumer Affairs in Brussels placed emphasis on the need to regulate the supply of materials ensuring plants grown will conform to strict standards of uniformity. Whilst this may be satisfactory for F1 hybrids and dare we say future GM Plants it is not for open pollinated varieties where diversity is the order of the day and plants exhibit tremendous variation including possible adaptability to changes in climate, lower nutrient levels or resistance to new pests and pathogens. A significant step has been taken with the political co-ordinators calling for a rejection combined with the unusual recommendation of statements from each party explaining the reasons for each rejection in order for the Commission to respond. This will mean that it is likely that the 1,400 recommendations made will have to be taken into consideration in the future deliberations for a revised regulation. Once again a BIG THANK YOU to all those who wrote letters and sent copies of the 7 Point Plan and the Vienna Declaration. CAMPAIGN A MAJOR SUCCESS A Big Thank You to all of our supporters and colleagues Seed regulation: Calls growing in the Agriculture committee to reject Commissions proposal, De Castro says Following the debate of the Agriculture committees political group coordinators on how to deal with the draft plant reproductive material regulation Monday evening, chairman of the EP Agriculture committee Paolo De Castro (S&D, IT) said: The draft law on plant reproductive material as proposed by the Commission is rather sensitive and at the same time very problematic. It merges 12 directives into one regulation, which would be directly applicable to all member states with no leeway to adapt new rules to their needs. It also includes high number of delegated acts - and thus too wide powers for the Commission - and combines rules for seeds and other plant reproductive material in one legislative text. These issues, among others, raised a lot of concerns voiced by political group coordinators during our Mondays meeting. Majority of group coordinators therefore agreed on Monday that the best possible solution at this stage would be to reject the proposed text in its entirety. The rejection should be followed by a resolution drafted by political groups explaining in details reasons for doing so. Bret Willers Development Director Garden Organic europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/20140128IPR34010/html/Seed-regulation-Calls-growing-to-reject-Commission%27s-proposal-De-Castro-says
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 09:48:47 +0000
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