Earlier this week we had an Agriculture Council meeting in Luxembourg. Among the many issues discussed, there were two rather contradictory points on the agenda.

One the one hand, we had yet another deadlock in the vote on the approval of three varieties of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for import, which have already been cleared by scientific risk assessments from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). One of these was the GM maize Mon88017, which has effectively shut down the crucial soy imports from the US, leading to higher feed prices for the EU livestock sector. As expected, the Council didn’t manage to reach either a positive or a negative verdict because some ministers decided to hide their true colours and abstain from voting. This means that the decision on authorisation is being sent back to the Commission, which will eventually adopt the proposals in November.

On the other hand, we discussed the situation on the dairy market, where the Commission put another € 280 million on the table from the CAP budget for dairy farmers, who in some parts of the EU are having trouble covering production costs when selling their milk. This step, which was requested by 21 ministers and the European Parliament, has now left us with no margin in the 2010 budget. Bad news if a crisis should strike elsewhere in the agricultural sector.

So to put it a bit bluntly, we are currently using one hand to shoot ourselves in the foot by unnecessarily increasing production costs whilst the other hand is trying to stop the bleeding with cool cash. As I pointed out at a recent conference at the European Policy Centre, it sometimes seems as if I were part of a television comedy, except for the fact that there is absolutely nothing to laugh about.

I mentioned before that some ministers have chosen to abstain from voting. This means that they don’t vote in favour of importing the GMO but they don’t vote against either. They simply choose to have no opinion on this very important matter.

Without getting too philosophical, it is clear that by not choosing they are still making a choice and that it will also have consequences. If a minister abstains from voting on the import of GMOs, it is de facto the same as voting against. Such policy choices do not stop the approval of the GMOs, but they certainly delay the decision. The question is just how much money and competitiveness our farmers will lose whilst we are playing slow-motion political ping pong?

As I have said before, this is not a call to allow unknown GMOs into Europe. I am merely asking why we insist on expensive solutions instead of tackling the problem at its root and in a cost-efficient way. We have to include input costs in any serious discussion about the future of European agriculture.

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