Brussels, 29 Jul 2003
The Council took note of the Commission's oral briefing regarding the guidelines it should adopt by the end of July on the issue of coexistence of conventional and organic farming and GMO crops and agreed to have an in-depth discussion on this issue at its next meeting.
A fair number of delegations did not wish to comment until they were in possession of the Commission document.
One delegation said it would like to have some time for examination, following which, on the basis of experiments conducted on targeted crops (maize, colza, beet), the desirability of whether or not to have recourse to a Community legislative framework to determine the rules on coexistence would be considered by the Council.
Some delegations took the floor to stress the need to avoid any distortion of competition within the internal market, between Member States. These delegations were in favour of a Community legislative framework.