[Gen-Streitfall] WTO Chief Appoints Panelists To Rule on EU GMO Restrictions

[Juergen Knirsch]

Entschuldigung für überschneidende Zusendungen

WTO-Reporter, Friday, March 5, 2004


WTO Chief Appoints Panelists To Rule on EU GMO Restrictions

GENEVA--World Trade Organization Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi
March 4 appointed the three panelists who will rule on a politically
charged complaint filed by the United States, Canada, and Argentina against
the European Union's de facto moratorium on market authorizations for
genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Chairing the three-member panel will be Christian Haberli, head of
international affairs with the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture.
Haberli has already served on several WTO panels, including the panels
which upheld U.S. complaints against the EU's banana import regime and,
most recently, Japan's quarantine restrictions on imported apples.

Assisting Haberli will be Mohan Kumar, a former Indian trade diplomat in
Geneva who is now assigned with India's embassy in Sri Lanka. Kumar was on
the WTO panel which ruled against President Bush's 2002 decision to impose
safeguard tariffs on imported steel.

Also assisting Haberli is Akio Shimizu, a Japanese official who served on
the WTO panel which recently upheld an Indian complaint against the EU's
preferential tariff regime for developing countries combating illicit drugs
production.

Supachai was asked by the United States, Canada, and Argentina on Feb. 23
to appoint the panelists after the three co-complainants failed to come to
an agreement with the EU on a mutually-acceptable slate. The appointment of
the panelists is the first movement in the dispute since the panel was
established on Aug. 29.

The co-complainants argue that, since October 1998, the EU has been
applying a moratorium on the approval of products containing GMOs without
any scientific justification, blocking a number of marketing applications
already in the pipeline. The three also accused Austria, France, Greece,
and Italy of prohibiting the importation and marketing of GM products, even
though those products have already been approved for sale within the EU.

First WTO GMO Panel Inquiry

The move to secure the appointment of the panelists follows several recent
failed efforts by the European Commission to get EU member states' approval
for the marketing of two GMOs at issue in the WTO dispute, BT-11 sweet corn
produced by Switzerland's Syngenta, and NK603 Roundup Ready corn produced
by U.S.-based Monsanto.

The case is the first to be brought before a WTO panel concerning a
restriction on GMO imports that is alleged to violate multilateral trading
rules. The dispute has already attracted considerable outside attention,
particularly in Europe, where resistance to GMO products remains strong.

The panelists will now meet with the parties in the dispute to discuss the
panel's working procedures and a timetable for the submission of arguments
and the scheduling of hearings. Officials following the case say that once
this is done, the first submissions from the co-complainants are likely to
follow shortly thereafter, since the three countries have had more than six
months to develop their arguments.

By Daniel Pruzin
______________________________________________________


Juergen Knirsch
Greenpeace Germany
Internationaler Handel/International Trade & WTO
Grosse Elbstrasse 39, D-22767 Hamburg, Germany
Phone +49 (0) 40 / 306 18 - 393
Mobile +49 (0) 171 / 87 80 816
Fax + 49 (0) 40 / 306 31 - 284
Email (external): juergen.knirsch at greenpeace.de
http://www.greenpeace.de
Email (internal): juergen.knirsch at de.gl3


Free People from Forced Trade
http://www.greenpeace.de/wto
http://www.greenpeace.org/trade
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/wto/


_______________________________________________________