Tomorrow in the EU Parliament a decision will be made on what committee will handle the seed legislation, ENVI the environment committee or AGRI the agriculture committee. NGOs have been lobbying hard for it to go to the ENVI committee, which is less influenced by large agricultural interests. Our position is that the debate should be more focused on the environmental issues, rather than the commercial ones. All other things being equal, and if this matter were handled in a free, fair and democratic way, we are all confident that ENVI would assume responsibility.
The reality is that pre-existing agreements mean that something like this with strong commercial consequences will almost certainly go to the AGRI committee. It’s just one more way Monsanto and similar companies control this kind of legislation.
If you want to watch the debate live or afterwords, it will be available for viewing from one of the links found on this page:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/committees/schedule?committee=AGRI
One Reply to “EU Seed Law: Committee Decision AGRI/ENVI”