The Commission accepted (as such, in principle, in part or subject to re-wording) 54 out of the 111 amendments adopted by the European Parliament at its first reading and revised its proposal consequently. All amendments of the European Parliament included in the Commission proposal have been taken into account, at least in part or subject to re-wording, in the common position.
The common position takes the greatest possible account of the European Parliament's opinion and accommodates the specific concerns of most Member States, while maintaining all the essential elements of the Commission proposal. Key elements, such as the scope of the authorisation and labelling sections of the proposal as well as the centralisation of the risk assessment and authorisation procedure, are not affected.
The common position makes a compromise between the European Parliament's opinion and the Commission's proposal, in restricting the conditions for derogation to authorisation and to labelling laid down in the Commission's proposal in case of adventitious or technically unavoidable presence of GM material in food and feed.
The Commission can accept these restrictions to the tolerance of the unauthorised GM material in food or feed the safety of which has been assessed in the Community and that has been recognised safe. The Commission prefers the original tolerance of 1% which would have had less interference with trade, but accepts the threshold of 0,5% retained in the common position in the context of an overall agreement and considering that the provision concerned will be reviewed (the Commission made a statement on this issue).�