The EU commission stirs

After their long summer break, the apparatchiks of the Socialist Republic of the European Union are slowly coming back to life – inasmuch as these zombie-like creatures can ever truly be regarded as "alive".

And right up front is agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, indulging in a bit of crude populism, declaring that the zombie-in-chief José Manuel Barroso is to consider allowing member states to ban EU-approved GM crops.

The European Commission President wants to "look at whether we can give the member states more freedom on this issue," says Fischer Boel, adding that she would support this idea.

At the same time, apparently contradicting the supposed effect of this new "freedom", she also advocates speeding up market approval for new GM maize lines "to lift trade barriers that have a emerged as a result of asynchronous approval of GMOs in the EU and in GMO export countries."

But then come the weasel-words. A distinction must be made between the importation of genetically modified plants and those grown in the EU itself, she says.

Then she adds: "I know that cultivation is a very sensitive issue." Member states do not have the right to prohibit the cultivation of GMO crops on their territory once it has been authorised in the EU, except if evidence is provided that the GMO is harmful for human health or the environment – which, so far, no member state has been able to provide.

Nevertheless, because there is little or no public acceptance for GMO acreage among the public, a majority of EU member states are lobbying to change this practice and Fisher Boel is making soothing noises about letting them have their way.

But all is not what is seems – it never is with that lot. Having been unable to break the logjam and get the member states to accept EU law on GMOs, and with the WTO breathing down its neck, the zombies are trying to pull a fast one.

Basically, the deal is that, at long as the member states accept the import of GM crops from Monsanto-land in Brazil and the USofA – thus keeping the WTO off their backs - the munificent EU will allow them to ban their own farmers from growing them.

I can see this going down a storm with our own NFU, and then the greenies won't be too happy either. But with the poison dwarf also playing games, the Poles telling the commission to get stuffed (in Polish, of course, when even "please" sounds like a swear-word), the zombies are really over a barrel.

So the drama continues, dragging on into eternity, we wrote last year. Nobody in the media here really gives a damn, the Tories don't want to touch it because it sets the greenies and their EU-luvvies on a collision-course, the government is running so fast from it that you can smell the burnt rubber at the top of Whitehall, and nobody listens to the farmers anyway. They're always moaning, so they can safely be ignored.

For all that, this really is a delicious conundrum – greenies versus zombies. It doesn't matter who wins, as long as they tear each other apart in the process.

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Tearing apart the House of Europe

With economic precision, the IHT reports that:

European Union authorities delayed decisions Wednesday on whether to allow European farmers to grow numerous types of genetically modified crops, heightening tensions with leading agro-science companies and risking further friction with trading partners like the United States.

So passed what was supposed to be the final, final deadline with the commission had set itself last month, the latest in the ongoing saga that is tearing the "House of Europe" apart.

This is what is so entertaining about this whole affair, barely reported by the British media – now there's a real surprise.

The EU, on the one hand, wants to be seen as "progressive", fostering the liberalisation of trade, and it regards biotechnology as one of the areas in its fabled "knowledge-based society" where it wants to Europe to take the lead. GM crops fit very nicely into that profile.

On the other hand, having cultivated the Greenies in a bid to talk up its environmental credentials – and thereby its popularity – and having also made itself slave to the "precautionary principle", the commission puts at risk the support of the entire Green lobby if it allows unfettered development of these products.

In effect, the commission is damned either way, and it is delicious watching it squirm.

Thus does the IHT record that the commission has come under pressure from industry and environmental groups - which is something of an achievement – over the approval of a potato produced by BASF of Germany and two strains of corn, one produced by DuPont and Dow AgroSciences of the United States, and another corn variety from the Swiss company Syngenta.

Desperately seeking a way out, the commission is attempting to kick the issue back into the long grass by directing the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to conduct additional safety tests on the products. This, it says, is the most effective way to reach a decision.

Needless to say, commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger could not say how long the review process would take, while trade commissioner Peter Mandelson's spokesman says that Europe (he means the European Union) is "making progress".

Mike Hall, a spokesman for Pioneer Hi-Bred, the maker of a pest resistant GM corn variety, was less then impressed. "Today represents continued procrastination and unnecessary delay," he said.

Another GM producer, BASF, is clearly losing patience and has warned of legal action against the commission if it did not rule soon to allow cultivation in Europe of the company's high-starch biotech potato, the Amflora. The food safety agency "has repeatedly stated that Amflora is safe for humans, animals and the environment," said Susanne Benner, a spokeswoman for BASF.

To add to the general disarray, a report from EU business tells us that its payroll lobbyist, Friends of the Earth Europe, together with Greenpeace, have ripped into the commission, condemning the referral back to the food safety agency as a "huge vote of no confidence in the EU's approval system," calling into question the agency's ability to vet GM crops.

Both organisations are now calling for EFSA to be "reformed", to ensure that its opinions are "scientifically sound and impartial". They also say that the agency is understaffed and lacks the appropriate expertise to fulfil its legal obligations on EU GMO risk assessments.

Asking Europe's underfunded and inadequate food agency to look at the safety of these crops for the third time is like putting a fox in charge of a hen house," declares said Marco Contiero, Greenpeace EU GMO campaign director.

So the drama continues, dragging on into eternity, a spectacle that can only be enjoyed – like a fine wine – by the connoisseurs of that uniquely corrupt and inept organisation, the European Union.

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Turning the Juggernaut round

Put it all together, as Booker as done in today’s column, and the case for a period of global cooling looks pretty persuasive.

As we have pointed out in numerous posts, the policy implications for this are huge, not least the effect on the global food supply and, in turn, the implications for global security.

What is remarkable, therefore, is how little coverage the media have devoted to the shifting sands of climate science. While Booker in his little ghetto draws it all together, the best The Sunday Times can offer is a pathetic article by environment editor Jonathan Leake.

Leake tells us that the Met Office - which believes this year will be one of the hottest on record - "is to warn gardeners to plan for a warmer climate by cultivating drought-tolerant plants such as palms, olives and Mediterranean herbs". Gardeners should resign themselves to the death of the traditional lawn, we are kindly informed.

There was once a time when newspapers actually offered news, but in between the torrent of political soap opera, they have in fact become propaganda sheets for the warmists. As their intellectual contortions become more and more comedic, we find that their latest explanation for the massive increase in sea ice in the Antarctica is, er … global warming.

So desperate have they become that climatologist Gareth Marshall of the British Antarctic Survey seems to be relying on "tea leaves" to assist him in forecasting Arctic sea ice coverage for next September.

Interestingly, of the articles posted on Google News forecasting a major ice melt in the Arctic this coming summer, not one seems to mention that the ice coverage this winter peaked at a million square kilometres above last winter's level.

In fact, atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University goes so far as to say that: "Over this entire fall, winter and right up 'till today the ice concentration, the amount of ice that's floating around on the Arctic, has been below normal every single day."

However, not all is lost. Some of the citizens in the small, Idaho panhandle town of Craigmon seem to have the right attitude (spool down). As we look out on a cold, rainy Sunday, and Gatewaypundit reports four feet of snow in Dakota (see pic), we can only agree with their sentiments.

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A reckoning to come

The upwards surge in wheat prices which we reported last in December is continuing apace.

On the European Union market, prices set new five-month highs on Friday while US markets surged to another round of new highs. In Paris, the March price was €7.75 higher at €277.00 per ton at end of trading while wheat futures in the US "sprinted" to a fresh all-time high of $10.93 per bushel.

Interestingly, the London feed wheat futures market, although higher, lagged behind the more rapid advances in Paris and Chicago. This is attributed to a more balanced supply and a lower demand for feed wheat, reflecting a downturn in the livestock market and the purchase of substitutes.

Nevertheless, the earlier trend is confirmed with one trader in Belgium saying, "The only way is up", all supporting earlier analyses that we are looking at a structural change in the market.

Still, however, the EU commission is failing to recognise the sea change, as is the media generally – witness this piece in the Independent which is still prattling on about "Fat cats" benefiting from EU farming subsidies.

This piece is by Colin Brown, the deputy political editor, who writes a long screed about the Queen and one of the richest men in London, the Duke of Westminster, being "among the biggest winners from this year's payment of farm subsidies."

Others are also cited, including the Mormon Church, evoking protests from Labour MPs who are saying that the money was being paid to so-called "fat cats" who did not need financial support – at the expense of poorer farmers in the Third World who were facing unfair competition from the EU.

Thus we get Labour MP Harry Cohen said: "The CAP costs a family of four nearly £11 a week and it is going to fat-cat landowners for no useful purpose. The sooner this system is reformed the better. It is a shocking scandal."

The paper then gets on to record that EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel is proposing to reduce subsides above €100,000 (£75,0000) by 10 per cent; above €200,000 by 20 per cent; and above €300,000 by 45 per cent, and is also planning to scrap compulsory practice of "set-aside".

So it is that our valiant guardians fail to make the connection. While the Chinese are actually subsidising their farmers for the first time, in a bid to stave off shortages in primary commodities, we see here complaints that sums are being spent on supporting agriculture.

For sure, arable farmers are doing relatively well at the moment, but the livestock sectors are still under enormous pressure, which is only likely to intensify as feed costs continue to climb. Rather than cutting back subsidies, therefore, the EU should be looking to targeted assistance for the affected sectors, or face the prospect of real shortages as more and more farmers drop out of production all together.

But such is the disconnect in Europe that, not only is France still messing about with GMOs, having suspended the use of genetically modified corn crops in France today, the EU is processing new regulations on pesticides, which are set to reduce dramatically the number of plant protection compounds available to farmers.

As resistance to some of the remaining compounds develops, growers fear they will see yield reductions and quality problems which could see the loss of some crops from certain regions. That say that, at a time of rising food prices and a need for farmers in Europe and the rest of the world to maximise production to feed both a growing population and satisfy growing industrial demand for biomass, hampering the agricultural sector in this way seems at best misguided.

Two of the major suppliers of crop protection products - Bayer CropScience and Syngenta – have commissioned a report from the Italian research institute Nomisma, called "European Agriculture of the Future: The role of Plant Production Products", which confirms that consequences of the regulations would be large yield reductions, significantly higher prices and much increased food imports.

Inevitably, this has been condemned by environmental activists, so MEPs and Commission officials are unlikely to be influenced by it as they stumble blindly down a path which will benefit no-one.

In due course, the food issue will impact on domestic politicians but, as yet, we are still in that strange twilight world where it has not registered. When they wake up to what will undoubtedly become a crisis, they will find that they not only have no power to affect supplies but that the EU, in recent history, has been doing virtually everything it can to restrict their availability.

For the moment, though, they can live in their sequestered, foetid little worlds. But the reckoning cannot be that long in coming. People will forgive many things of their politicians, but not when their bellies are empty.

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A marathon trial of strength

Since February 2006 all 16 regions of Poland have declared themselves GMO-free, the GMO-free Europe website proudly declares, telling us that Poland therefore joins Greece and Austria as the third country with a complete "GMO-free" status.

In May 2006, we observed that the Polish government seemed to be headed for a confrontation with the EU on this issue – and so it has come to pass.

The commission has just announced that it has referred the Polish GMO ban to the ECJ, almost exactly two years after the 16 states declared.

Several warning letters to the Polish government have not brought a climb-down. If anything, the government's position has hardened. It has told Brussels that it believes the use of GMOs "encroaches on the sphere of public morality, an encroachment that would justify a total ban on GM seeds." Thus, Brussels is now saying it "has no alternative but to refer Poland to the ECJ."

With Sarkozy also playing games and the commission under pressure from the WTO over member state bans, this is trial of strength between the commission and the member states is turning into a marathon.

With the glacial speed of proceedings in the ECJ, it will be some time yet before the case is heard. If, as is strongly expected, the judgement goes against Poland, then it will be more than interesting to see what happens then. Will Poland huff and puff, and then roll over - as it usually does? We shall see.

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Fun and games

Both Austria and France have tried it on – to say nothing of Poland - and last we heard José Bové and some of his amis had gone on hunger strike in a bid to stop Sarkozy weakening and allowing them in.

We are, of course, referring to GMOs and, despite all these good little Europeans being in favour of rule from Brussels, when it comes to obeying EU law, they are nowhere to be seen. In defiance of that EU law, some member states are still refusing to allow imports of GM maize.

Now, Argentina, Canada and the United States are getting tired of the Europeans' games and, according to Reuters, are poised to retaliate against their continued obduracy.

European Union member states have until Friday to comply with a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling in a long-running case that has already seen an extension of the deadline from mid-November. Failing acceptable action, the three states can impose punitive sanctions on the entire 27 EU member states – including the UK which, so far, has complied with the WTO ruling. Such are the joys of belonging to a customs union.

To stave off this potentially damaging action, the EU commission must enforce its own laws – with Austria currently being the main culprit - and, while the officials have the power to do so, the commission itself has yet to decide to do this. Furthermore, the commission members disagree amongst themselves.

So, says Reuters, in Brussels the clock is ticking, while the world waits to see which way our supreme government jumps. But, in the wake of the maize come the killer tomatoes … and we all know what happened then.

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The officials decide

Nothing better illustrates the malign way in which the EU works than the long-running GMO saga – and Austria's vain attempts to avoid the introduction of genetically modified maize.

The drama has been playing out since May 2000 when Austria drafted a Genetic Technology Prohibition Law, allowing its regions to declare themselves GM-free. As a result, the Upper Austria region imposed a ban, which the EU commission then declared contrary to EU rules.

After serpentine twists and turns, the situation came to a head in December last year when member states at the Council of Ministers refused to give the commission powers to force Austria to ditch its ban, an apparent victory for its government.

Not to be denied, however, the commission brought the issue back to the Council yesterday, having prepared its ground a little more thoroughly, when the vote was not sufficient to support Austria’s retention of its ban. But neither was there a majority for the commission, to authorise it to take action against Austria, creating – one would have thought – something of a stalemate.

Under the arcane rules of what is known as comitology, however, the issue now goes back to the regulatory committee, comprising offiicals of the member states, which approved GMO products in the first place. They now have the power to make the final decision, which is then rubber-stamped by the commission.

Thus it is that when formerly independent nations want to reject a product – for good reasons or bad – they must appeal to the 26 other member states of the EU. And, when they fail to attract enough support, they have their case referred to a panel of officials who are able to dictate what they should do.

With France also contesting their introduction, this is putting some of the member states at loggerheads with the commission over a highly sensitive issue, that will not go down well with the voting populations when they find that mere officials can over-rule their democratically elected leaders. But will it make any difference?

Pic: Josef Proell, Austrian Federal Minister for Agriculture, Forestry, the Environment and Water Management, talking to Sigmar GABRIEL, (right) German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Reactor Safety – a sharp contrast with the picture in December last.

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Little Gallic games

France, we are told by Reuters and others – more particularly president Nicolas Sarkozy – has announced that he is to "suspend" the planting of genetically modified (GMO) pest-resistant crops.

The suspension will remain in force until he receives the results of an appraisal of the issue later this year or early in 2008, to be carried out by a new authority on GMOs that, at the moment, does not even exist. It is to be set up by the French government later this year.

Those with slightly longer memories will know that this represents a significant climbdown by Sarkzoy. Towards the end of September, he was signalling not a "suspension" but a complete ban on GMO crops.

But, if he didn't know then that he no longer had the power to do this - and had to defer to the central government in Brussels – he certainly must have known shortly afterwards. His statement then provoked an immediate protest from the commission, which sternly reminded France that such a ban was prohibited by EU rules. We recorded Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, saying that, "A general ban is not possible" for an EU state or region.

However, Sarkozy is trapped between a rock and a hard place, the "rock" being the EU commission and the "hard place" being anti-globalisation campaigner José Bové, who – as we reminded readers in our last piece on this subject - still exerts a powerful influence on French politics and is not one Sarkozy will cross willingly.

Unable to satisfy both his masters in Brussels (or even admit they are his masters) and the "anti-globalisationists", Sarkozy is thus resorting to little Gallic games, playing for time by setting up a spurious agency to carry out a spurious analysis.

From past experience (the French played similar games over BSE and British exports), he will wrap himself in the EU flag and push his luck with the commission, but never go quite too far. He may even let the issue go to the ECJ, but will move the goalposts before it rules.

This is playing the "Europe" game, à la française. The French are supremely good at it, and it is something the communautaire Brits have never really understood. They consider it "bad form" or simply "not cricket": "If you are on a losing wicket, old boy," they will mutter, "you should declare and let the other chap have a go".

In the end, though, the French are on a losing wicket but, with a little creative manoeuvring, Sarkozy can drag it out so long that, eventually, it will become his successor's problem. Then, personally, he will have "won" – and that's what the game is all about.

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The law of unintended consequences

The Eurocrats deep in their Brussels bunkers must be wondering if they can ever get anything right – poor things.

For years and years, their CAP (Common Agricultural Policy, to you and me) has been a by-word for excess, with wine lakes, butter mountains and grain stores bulging to capacity, as taxpayers' money went into subsidising excess production that simply went into "intervention" stores.

Thus hard did they labour and, apart from a wine lake that is having to be turned into industrial alcohol, the stores are empty … just at a time when reserve stocks are badly needed.

In fact, according to a Reuters report, the error is even more spectacular than that as, in expectation of a bumper grain crop this year, the commission deliberately ran down grain stocks by setting the intervention price so low that there were no takers when it came to putting grain into store.

But, with increasing demand and a poor harvest in the Northern hemisphere grain prices have soared and the Commission – which prides itself on being able to regulate the market by releasing product back onto the market, when prices rise too rapidly - has been left with no tools at its disposal.

Thus, the current surge in prices is starting to have an impact on food prices, raising concern that it could hit consumers purchasing power and increase inflation rates.

Ironically, until last year, the EU had millions of tons of grain stocks at its disposal, which could be sold onto the market to offset supply squeezes. But the so-called intervention stores are now empty after the EU sold the lion's share of the grain onto the internal market during the 2006/07 marketing campaign.

The only options left open now to cool the sharp rally are boosting internal output or opening EU borders to imports, officials say, although there is limited scope for the former. The rush to meet biofuels quotas is soaking up any spare capacity and even the release of set-aside back into food production will have little effect as much of it is already devoted to biofuel production.

However, while the "barley barons" are rejoicing at the increased prices, the livestock sectors are groaning under the burden of increased feed costs and feed producers are demanding a solution to the "problem".

One option, we are told, would be to scrap the €12-euro per ton tariff on wheat imports within the three million tons quotas set up in 2003 to counter the massive imports from eastern Europe. This is regarded as "feasible but dangerous", on the basis that it would be extremely difficult to reinstate, if ever there was a need.

Thus, some traders and feed producers asked the EU to reconsider its restrictions on imports of genetically modified (GMO) crops, which – for the moment - are abundant in the world and could rapidly relieve shortages on the European market.

And that is yet another of those delicious ironies. In their drive to promote renewable energy sources, the Greenies are inadvertently increasing the pressure to introduce the very things they absolutely detest – genetically modified crops.

It would appear that they are entirely unfamiliar with that universal concept – the law of unintended consequences.

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A single European lame duck?

The EU Council yesterday refused to give the commission powers to force Austria to ditch its ban on two GM maize varieties which have been approved for use throughout the EU.

The picture shows a jubilant Josef Proell, the Austrian agriculture and environment minister (left), being congratulated by the Estonian environment minister after the meeting – a scene witnessed by an enthralled interpreter in her booth (ringed - see also enlargement, below right).

This is the latest step in a bizarre drama which has been played out ever since May 2000 when Austria drafted a Genetic Technology Prohibition Law, allowing its regions to declare themselves GM-free.

The EU Commission rejected the law but Upper Austria persevered, seeking to impose a three-year ban on the use of GMOs to "protect organic and traditional agricultural agriculture and to prevent hybridisation."

In so doing, it invoked Treaty article 95(5), the so-called "environmental guarantee" clause, which allows member states to take specific action to protect its environment, but the Commission did not accept the this application of the Treaty.

That case was referred to the European Court of Justice and, on 5 October 2004, the EU Court of First Instance ruled that Austria had failed to provide scientific justification for the measures, after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published an opinion that stated that no new evidence for health or environmental risks was presented by the Region to justify its law.

Since then, the commission has been seeking powers to enforce the removal of the ban, for which it needed Council approval but, by a qualified majority, the Council has once again thwarted any attempts to bring the errant member state into line.

In a direct snub to both the commission and the court, the Council has declared that a member state has the power to restrict the use and/or sale of a GMO and that the different agricultural structures and regional ecological characteristics in the European Union need to be taken into account in a more systematic manner in the environmental risk assessment of GMOs.

On that basis, the Council considered there were sufficient grounds for rejecting the Commission's demand for new powers and that the use of the temporary precautionary measures was justified.

The campaigning organisation Friends of the Earth is delighted with the decision, but the commission, which went the extra mile in an attempt to accommodate Austria, is in serious trouble.

Its action is in response to a WTO finding that so-called "national GMO safeguards" are a breach of its rules – after a case taken by Argentina, Canada and the United States - leaving the EU as a whole in breach of its WTO obligations.

The commission was supported only by Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic and now the commission has to consider its next step, which could include a reference to the European Union Court, challenging the Council's decision.

Whatever the outcome, this is a major defeat for the commission and one that strengthens the resolve of the member states. Next in line are Hungary and Greece, where the confrontation could be repeated – with like result. If that is the case, Mr Barroso's commission will be taking on the aspect of a lame duck, presumably the single European lame duck.

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2011? Do I hear 2014?

Hungary's probable entry into the euro (probable in the sense of not being completely impossible) is shifting. Not before 2010 we were told earlier this month and, although the country's convergence plans were accepted this Friday by the EU as being more plausible than the earlier ones, the chances of anything happening before 2011 or, even, 2014 are unlikely.

Whether entering the euro is quite the solution for Hungary's multiplying economic problems is questionable, but that some reforms need to be introduced is certain.

Finance Minister János Veres has promised that the country will meet the EU's convergence criteria by 2009. Among other matters this would mean reducing the budget deficit from the 10.1 per cent of GDP, forecast for 2006 to 3.2 per cent.

"The government's euro adoption plan foresees a budget deficit of 6.8 percent of GDP in 2007, followed by 4.3 percent in 2008 and 3.2 percent in 2009.

The six-year plan begins by focusing on creating long-term balance in 2006-2009. A more dynamic, second period between 2009 and 2011 is meant to steadily boost Hungary's economic standing."

Hungarian central bank President Zsigmond Járai remains dissatisfied with the programme despite it being welcomed by Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads Eurogroup, the committee of euro-zone finance ministers.

""Hungary's convergence plan "focuses too much on the revenue side", the central bank said in a separate statement on its Web site, adding the "program still underestimates the inflationary impact of the measures". The bank also said that without further austerity measures, the country's budget deficit may not be reduced after 2008."

Given the economic circumstances of most of the ten new member states it remains unlikely that any of them will join the euro in a hurry unless, the rules are bent, just a little, as they were for several of the original members.

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