Agrégateur de flux

Cour d'assises de Seine et Marne, section 1, 27 janvier 2017 ; Cour d'assises du Val de Marne, 14 janvier 2017

Pourvoi c./ Cour d'appel de Nouméa, 1ere chambre, 28 février 2017

Pourvoi c./ Cour d'appel de Versailles,13e chambre, 30 mars 2017

Pourvoi c./ Cour d'appel de Paris, Pôle 6, 30 Mars 2017

Hang on a minute. Were not the EU and its Member States supposed to be precaution obsessed? Don’t the EU and its Member States alike adopt bans on all things GMO for no other reason than that they simply do not want them? How then can the CJEU hold in C-111/16 Fidenato that Member States do not have the option of adopting, in accordance with Article 54 of Regulation 178/2002, the EU’s general food safety law, interim emergency measures solely on the basis of the precautionary principle?

The reason lies in pre-emption, aka exhaustion, and in the balance between EU and national risk management which EU law strikes in the specific field of GM cultivation. Of note is that in the meantime most biotech companies have given up on cultivation of GM varieties in the EU.

As extremely well summarised by Bobek AG in his Opinion in the case, the formulation of the relevant EU legislation is such as to provide that post EU authorisation (here: of genetically modified maize MON 810) Member States may only take emergency measures where the continued cultivation of the approved products is ‘likely to constitute a serious risk’. While the precautionary principle may play its role fully at the level of the EU’s risk management preceding authorisation, and indeed post such authorisation, too, Member States are given less leeway in their national emergency measures. In prescribing these rules, the EU safeguards the harmonised approach to the GM varieties at issue.

(Mr Fidenato nb is something of a cause celebre among the GM community). Please note, again, that the case concerns the growing (‘cultivation’) of GM crops. Not the import, export or use of products containing GM.

Finally it is important to point out that the Court does not equate precaution with the absence of science. It is the degree of scientific certainty here which is relevant, not the absence ‘v’ presence thereof.

Geert.

Dans la présente communication, la Commission européenne évalue les actions réalisées dans le cadre de l’Agenda européen pour les migrations et présente les futures étapes nécessaires au perfectionnement de la politique migratoire européenne.

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