Respect other countries’ freedom to trade in commodities

 New biotech products and crops continue to be approved, cultivated and commercialised at a higher speed and in greater numbers in other parts of the world such as North America, South America, Asia, and South Africa.
 
This leads to the lawful presence of biotech products on those markets and despite strong product channeling, it is inevitable that low levels of these products will be present in traded commodities such as grains and derived products that are exported from those countries to Europe. At the moment, the EU does not permit any presence of biotech material, approved outside the EU, to be present in traded commodities entering the EU.
 
Huge delays in product approvals in the EU are the result of both Europe’s de facto moratorium as well as the continued asynchronous approval speed compared with the rest of the world. The net effect of this is that the EU is increasingly exposed to the potential for incidents where low level presence of biotech material approved outside the EU, appears in traded commodities consequently leading to trade disruptions. This issue of asynchronous approvals was highlighted as an important issue in the recent WTO case. 
 
Without an urgent solution to address this problem and given the uncertainty in international commodity markets, it is likely that many industries in the EU will suffer from insufficient quantities of traditionally imported raw materials.
 


 Suggested solutions
  
 1. The European Commission and Member States should ensure that the approval system for biotech products works in a timely fashion, and that the undue delays are solved to reduce approval gaps with the rest of the world in order to avoid trade disruptions.
 
 2. In the immediate term, the European Commission should consider finding a pragmatic approach to manage the presence of low levels of biotech products and derived products in a traded commodity where these have been evaluated as safe in accordance with internationally recognized criteria, commercialised in third countries but not yet approved in the EU. This would significantly minimise tensions and reduce disruptions on the international market.
 
 3. The European Commission and Member States should continue to support the Codex work project on the presence of low levels of biotech grains and derived products in traded commodities.