Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it was in the year 2000 that the European Union signed the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, an international agreement which is now to be implemented, and as quickly as possible. The Protocol aims, by applying international rules to trade in living GMOs, to prevent effects detrimental to biodiversity and to human health. It governs the safe transfer, handling and use of genetically modified organisms, placing the emphasis on their movement across borders. For this there is to be a procedure involving the prior informed consent of the importing country. In the case of GMOs intended for immediate use as foodstuffs and feedingstuffs, or for processing, it envisages notification to the Commission or to the Biosafety Clearing House. The Regulation's provisions will apply only to export to third countries outside the European Union. Community law already applies to imports into the European Union and to trade between its Member States. The future EU Regulation should be as strictly as possible in accordance with the Protocol's requirement, in order to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy and for uniform international standards to create legal certainty. It must, at the same time, be ensured that European export businesses do not, as a result, face formalities additional to those with which they must already comply when exporting to third countries. The report that Mr Sjöstedt has presented has, however, largely lost sight of the aim of maintaining biodiversity. Of the many demands contained in it, some, on the one hand, go far beyond what the Cartagena Protocol requires, whilst others attempt to artificially restrict trade in living GMOs. I see it as inexpedient to incorporate into the Regulation requirements relating to traceability and liability, as these issues are currently being debated in the course of a separate legislative procedure and therefore do not belong in this Regulation. The Protocol takes for granted the exclusion of GMOs exported for use in closed systems from the complicated and expensive notification procedure. No such provision is present in this report, or in the Commission proposal. That is why I, along with Mrs Sommer and Mr Purvis, am reintroducing the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee's Amendment No 50, which we ask you to support. It is my conviction that GMOs used in laboratories and not released into the environment represent no danger to biodiversity or to human health, and should therefore be excluded from the notification procedure. Our Amendment No 51 calls for further derogations from the notification procedure in order to avoid unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles hampering trade in GMOs. Moreover, the Regulation must follow the Cartagena Protocol as closely as possible in order to create greater legal certainty for international trade. That is why GMOs in respect of which the importing country has already granted an exporter a license, and GMOs in respect of which the importing country has already granted a license for field trials, need to be capable of being exported without expensive approval procedures. Dual notifications make little sense, as they result in more bureaucracy and far from greater safety for people and the environment. What we need is sensible and practical rules in order to make good use of biotechnology's chances in third countries while maintaining biodiversity. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE