Draft Commission decisions, to be submitted to environment ministers for approval at one of their future meetings, possibly in December, showed that Austria could face legally binding orders to abolish its bans on import and processing into food and animal feed products for the two GMO maize types.

Between 1997 and 2000, five EU countries banned specific GMOs on their territory, focusing on three maize and two rapeseed types approved shortly before the start of the EU's six-year moratorium on new biotech authorisations.

Austria has banned two GMO maize types, one in 1997 and the other in 1999. The first ban was against MON 810 maize made by US biotech giant Monsanto and the second against T25 maize made by German drugs and chemicals group Bayer.

If the ministers agree to the Commission's proposals, Austria would have to lift its two GMO bans at the latest 20 days after it was notified of the order to do so. If it failed to do this, the country would then face legal action.

WTO CASE

For many years, little has changed in the split of opinion on biotech policy among the EU's governments, which are consistently unable to secure the weighted majority that is legally required to vote through a new GMO approval.

Ironically, national GMO bans seem to be about the only area of EU policy on biotech crops and foods where the bloc's member governments can actually agree -- by backing a country when it decides to exercise its legal right to restrict the presence or use of GMOs on national territory, if scientifically justified.

Observers say the Commission's various attempts to get countries to lift their GMO bans -- Austria has not been the only example -- come in response to a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling that attacked the various so-called national GMO safeguards for breaking international trade rules.