EU Parliament Rejects Draft Seed Regulation

0 thoughts on “EU Parliament Rejects Draft Seed Regulation”

  1. Thank you Janina for this post (I really think your blog is really something really unique and useful)
    I just say a few comments about this vote 2 days ago…
    The main problem is that the concernes mentioned by the Parliament and many half-scientific articles are all untrue if we read the Proposal itself.
    Niche market material (Art 36), traditional varieties (eg. Art9(3)), exemption of small farmers (Art 89), exemtion of hobbyists, scientific purposes, breeding (Art 2) etc. were already included in the Proposal of 6 May 2013. The Commission wouldn’t regulate what we plant to our gardens, what seed we give to our neighbours and so on.
    The problem is that most people don’t read the draft, just simply echoe currently fashionable statements (as biodiversity, freedom of use of seeds, GMOs etc) which have actually nothing to do with this draft Regulation.
    In the Council the Member States’ experts work on and improve the wording and provisions of the text, aiming to modernise the current system, where some of the Directives come from 1966 (and the list of amendments is almost longer then the text itself)…I just simply don’t see how someone can say this system should be maintained amidst the European agriculture modernisation efforts.
    Of course, the Proposal is not perfect yet, that’s why the experts are continuously working on it- however rejecting the work of hundreds of people of more than 3 years now is really primitive, totally unjustified and purely political (as now certain parties can show off how they “protected” European seeds against the “ugly Monsanto-buddy Commission”… and people will accept it, because they read it on the Internet, so it must be true- even though the Proposal is about a totally different thing, and its main values are exatly the opposite…)
    However it’s nice to see that someone cares about this topic and I think you summarised well the currently available information… (My comment was not against you at all, I truly love your posts, I was just really shocked how obvious political interests can crush serious agricultural development efforts in such aan extremely short time).
    Here are the comments of the European Seed Association (I think they really summerised well why this decision was really unfortunate:) https://twitter.com/ESA_euroseeds
    Oh, and the text itself:
    http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_consumer/pressroom/docs/proposal_aphp_en.pdf

    1. Thank you so much for your interesting comment! It is hard to figure out what is really the optimal scenario with so many stakeholders involved, but I agree that throwing out all this work by a lot of competent people must be extremely frustrating for them. I’m curious as to how the story develops!

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