As the EU Commission today informed the permanent representatives of the Council, it has changed its legal assessment and now accepts that the proposed Directive on labelling GMOs in seeds can only be adopted by a qualified majority of member states within the Standing Committee responsible for deliberate releases of GMOs into the environment (Directive 2001/18). Until now the Commission intended to push through the GM Seeds Directive under a technical procedure in the Standing Committee on Seeds, where it would have been adopted unless a qualified majority of member states voted against it. The FT calls it a U-turn on modified seeds.The Save our Seeds Initiative today celebrates an important success, but the contamination thresholds proposed by the Commission still remain unchanged.</p><p><a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=9&u=/nm/20031023/sc_nm/environment_eu_gmo_dc">Reuters - EU Rethinks Strategy on Agreeing Gene Seed Rules</a></p><p><a href="http://www.zs-l.de/saveourseeds/downloads/zsl_20_10_en.pdf">Save our Seeds press release</a>