EU countries that have pressed for hard-and-fast laws on separating biotech, organic and traditional crops could do worse than follow Denmark's recent example, the bloc's incoming farm commissioner said today.
Speaking to reporters after a first gathering of the next European Commission, Ms Mariann Fischer Boel - Denmark's former agriculture minister - said Copenhagen's law in this tricky area of EU policy could easily serve as benchmark legislation.
So far, the EU executive has insisted that EU states should take responsibility on how their farmers should separate the three farming types and minimise cross-contamination: an issue known in EU jargon known as coexistence.
"For some member countries, it has been a wish to get common rules on GMOs (genetically modified organisms). It's a hot topic in many of the countries," Ms Fischer Boel said.
"Probably the last legislation that I managed to do before the summer holidays was . . . to get a huge majority in the Danish Parliament to support legislation on coexistence. This could be a very good idea for other countries to look at how we did it."
Biotechnology remains an extremely controversial area for the EU, even after it lifted its unofficial ban in May on authorising new GMOs by approving a modified sweet maize type to be sold in cans for human consumption.
For many EU countries, especially anti-GMO diehards such as Austria, Luxembourg and Denmark, it is essential to clarify the issue of coexistence - but with EU-wide, not national, laws.
So far, only a handful of EU governments have drafted coexistence laws providing for financial liability in cases of crop contamination. These laws must be based on guidelines issued by the European Commission last July.
Germany's parliament, for example, is due to debate a draft national law on coexistence next month.
The guidelines refer to isolation distances between crops, buffer zones and pollen barriers such as hedgerows, as well as advice on cooperation between farmers on sowing plans and crop varieties with different flowering times.
Denmark's law obliges farmers planning to grow GMO crops to pay a fee, per sown hectare, into a fund that would compensate conventional farmers whose crops might become contaminated.
GMO farmers will also have to inform neighbouring farmers of their plans and ensure mandatory separation distances. But they would only have to pay compensation if the rules were broken.