BioWorld International Correspondent

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik defended genetically modified crops, in the course of a debate during the European Parliament's September plenary session.

"The legislative framework for the authorization of GMOs for placing on the market and for deliberate release into the environment in the European Union does not provide the possibility to establish zones where the cultivation or placing on the market of GMOs is generally prohibited," Potocnik said. "A general ban would contradict community legislation," he said.

Potocnik insisted that farmers are free to decide among themselves not to cultivate GMOs or to create voluntary zones where GM crops are not cultivated. But, he said, "these zones can be established only under the voluntary and unanimous agreement of all farmers concerned in the respective locations, while allowing for the possibility for any farmer to withdraw and cultivate authorized GMOs if he or she so wishes."

The commissioner's comments came in the same week that the region of Upper Austria lost its bid to win legal approval for a GMO-free zone. The EU's highest court, the European Court of Justice, dismissed appeals from Upper Austria, backed by the Austrian national government, to permit a continued ban on the use of genetically modified organisms.

EuropaBio, the European biotech industry association, greeted this as "a most important decision clearly rejecting the possibility to establish statutory 'GMO-free' regions." But the drama will continue for some months yet, as Poland now is defying the EU by insisting on its right to impose national limits on the use of GMOs already approved at EU level.