The European Union remains deeply divided over genetically modified (GMO) foods, with the planting of biotech seeds a tremendously touchy area even though Brussels has resumed authorising GMO products after a break of nearly six years.

Several EU states have passed a patchwork of laws to control growing of biotech crops but many are holding back in the hope that uniform EU rules will be drafted, officials say.

At the moment, EU governments must make their own rules for separating different crop types to minimise cross-pollination and for financial liability if a farmer claims a neighbour’s sowings have damaged his crop. Very few have yet done so.

Only a few GMO crops are allowed for growing, mostly maize.

Despite calls for more than a year from anti-GMO diehards such as Austria and Luxembourg for a bloc-wide law on crop separation, so-called co-existence, the EU’s executive Commission has declined to oblige.

One result of this approach is that several countries now have laws far stricter than the Commission would have wanted, angering the biotech industry and raising the prospect of legal action for distorting the EU’s single market.

Germany’s law, perhaps the most controversial so far, has attracted the attention of Commission lawyers charged with checking that national laws comply with EU legislation and also conform with broad Commission guidelines from July 2003.

One clause specifies the joint liability of all GMO farmers with fields that border a “contaminated” non-GMO crop in cases where it is impossible to name an individual farmer as liable.

Critics say this would force a GMO farmer to prove that his crops were not to blame in a neighbour’s contamination claim - a powerful and costly deterrent to planting GMO crops at all. “The Commission, being the guardians of the law, should see that the measures introduced aren’t disproportionate,” said Simon Barber of Brussels-based industry lobby group EuropaBio.

“What the German government has done is way beyond what is required,” he said.

FEW LAWS YET

So far, only Germany, Denmark, Italy and five regions of Austria have laws to regulate GMO cultivation, while the main Dutch farming organisations have reached a voluntary agreement.

Another eight countries are drafting laws, with those from Spain, Luxembourg, Portugal, Poland and the Czech Republic the most advanced. Others have no plans yet for legislation.

France, the EU’s top cereals grower, should submit a first report on a co-existence law to its parliament in a few weeks.

Farmers who oppose GMO agriculture say their crops risk contamination, while those in favour are angry at the high costs that exercising their right to go biotech will entail.

The EU’s new agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, says she might consider an EU framework regulation with leeway for national governments to make additional rules.

While green groups broadly welcome the move, they say it might also deter more GMO-skeptic countries from drafting any co-existence law at all, knowing they might not have to do so.

“If there’s going to be an EU regulation, there’s not going to be any rush from member states to bring out their own co-existence measures,” said Adrian Bebb from environment lobby group Friends of the Earth.

Some of the national laws passed so far are tough. All will be reviewed by the Commission at the end of this year.

In Denmark, the first country to pass a co-existence law, farmers wanting to grow GMO crops must obtain a permit and then pay a fee per sown hectare - in effect, a “GMO tax” - into a fund to compensate other farmers whose crops get contaminated. Italy, a long-time foe of biotech crops, recently passed a law with an opt-out clause for non-biotech farmers.

That allows regional governments to set their own rules and designate areas for GMO cultivation. They have until December to adopt the law and until then no GMO growing will be allowed. Of Italy’s 20 regions, more than half want to stay GMO-free.

And under Luxembourg’s draft law, biotech farmers would have to take out insurance before they started growing crops - many insurance companies are reluctant to offer GMO policies - and risk a hefty fine, with a jail term, if they break the law.

“We’re not worried at the moment. We’re looking at the laws as they are introduced in the member states and we will do a review at the end of the year,” one Commission official said.

“But you can’t have a single set of rules to apply from northern Finland to southern Spain as the climatic differences are so great. Nevertheless, we would look for some consistency across the board,” he told Reuters.