The European Union, through its health and consumer directorate DG SANCO, is reviewing its seed marketing legislation. A public consultation on impacts and possible scenarios is open until 30 May 2011. In their words, the problem with the current system is "the complexity of the legislation, the degree of resources that need to be dedicated to its implementation and its non-harmonised application among Member States. Moreover, the link of agriculture to sustainable development needs to be reflected more strongly given the needs of the society that have emerged over the last two decades."
Many groups are critically looking into what this legislative reform is about: the real intended outcomes and who will benefit. For FIAN International, the EU's attempt to "simplify" the seed trade means we will lose more diversity -- both in terms of who can market seeds and what kind of seeds they can market. For the French organisations Peasant Seed Network (Réseau Semences Paysannes), Peasant Confederation (Confédération Paysanne, member of La Via Campesina) and allies, the EU is really trying to make it possible to more easily market GMOs, not biodiversity nor farmers' seeds. A new report from the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development presses the point that EU see
d laws leave farmers, and European agriculture in general, seriously ill-equipped to deal with climate change. Back in Brussels, the Greens / European Free Alliance are organising a public debate on these matter with the European authorities on 31 May 2011.
In the meantime, many grassroots groups are organising direct actions, networks and movements to build real food sovereignty in European grounded in peasant seed systems and agri-cultures. Most of these were born in the context of legal repression against farmers' seed systems and biodiversity. Will the EU seed law reforms finally take us in the right direction? Highly unlikely, but people will nonetheless be using the space to speak out and mobilise.