International

SP Euro-MP Kartika Liotard has put written questions to the European Commission concerning genetically modified (GM) foodstuffs of uncertain quality, which, despite serious doubts about their safety have nevertheless found their way on to European consumers' plates. The European Commission did everything it could to hold back this information until environmental organisations managed to get hold of it.

The European Union's plan to usurp the core tasks of the Council of Europe by establishing its own agency for human rights has been rejected by Members of Parliament from its forty-six member states. Such an agency would mean throwing away millions of euros in reproducing the work of the Council of Europe, which has for more than half a century concerned itself with human rights issues, via its parliamentary assembly (PACE), the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Commissioner for Human Rights.