Jean-Claude Juncker has had enough of EU states scapegoating Brussels for their failures.
Over his first two years as president of the European Commission, he has been repeatedly undermined by countries passing the buck to Brussels on toxic decisions about controversial topics like genetically modified food and pesticides.
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A stark example of how the EU’s legislative sausage gets made will take place next month when European countries need to decide whether to clear genetically modified crops for cultivation. The countries have been unable to reach a verdict. If they fail to agree in March, the European Commission will be forced to take the decision, leaving Juncker, yet again, to take the flack.
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[N]ext month’s vote on GM crops will not by made by ministers or lawmakers inside the European Parliament but by civil servants within a comitology body known as the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals and Feed. It is these meetings that Juncker will try and reform next Tuesday — to gleeful celebrations in parts of Brussels.…
The results of the comitology process were also on display in June last year when representatives of the EU’s national governments failed to come to an agreement on the reapproval of glyphosate, the active substance in Monsanto’s ubiquitous herbicide RoundUp. Forced to try to resolve the disagreement, the Commission extended the license for glyphosate to the end of 2017, to criticism from environmentalists.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Juncker plans radical shake-up to save the EU from itself
