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European Commission to act against 8 countries over biotech law
(Monday, July 7, 2003 -- CropChoice news) -- Reuters: BRUSSELS - EU officials were cited as saying on Monday that the European
Commission will this week take France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, the
Netherlands, Austria and Luxembourg to court for failing to apply EU laws
aimed at protecting biotechnological inventions which are crucial to the
bloc's competitiveness.
The story says that an EU directive dating from 1998 protects biotech
inventions such as new plants or sequences of genes, but the eight countries
have not yet transposed the directive into their own legislation, to the
detriment of Europe's fledgling biotech industry. |