Disputed French bill on GM crops to make come-back

By Emile Picy

PARIS, May 14 (Reuters) - A French bill on genetically modified crops will be re-submitted to parliament unchanged, a committee said on Wednesday, a day after it was blocked by legislators in an embarrassment for President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The ruling UMP party is divided over the bill, which would regulate the cultivation of GM crops in France. Pro-GM members believe it is too restrictive, while antis say it is too lax.

Under a technical procedure, a legislative committee convened after Tuesday's blockage and said the text would be re-submitted for a vote by each of the chambers, the lower National Assembly and the upper Senate.

Many UMP legislators were absent from the National Assembly on Tuesday during a debate that was supposed to result in a positive vote. In their absence, the chamber passed a technical objection -- by a single vote -- which blocked the text.

The opposition Socialists and environmental campaigners expressed jubilation and called for a complete overhaul of the bill, which they say is too favourable to the interests of biotech companies such as U.S. giant Monsanto.

But the government minimised the setback and said it should not detract from important legislative work on GM crops.

"Yesterday's regrettable incident will not divert the government from its responsibilities," Prime Minister Francois Fillon told parliament on Wednesday, defending the bill and vowing it would pass into law.

SETBACK

The setback in the Assembly was widely interpreted as a humiliation for Sarkozy, a week after he hosted UMP legislators at his Elysee Palace for a meeting aimed at reinforcing unity between the executive and the increasingly restive legislature.

Party morale has been low because of Sarkozy's opinion poll slump and the UMP's heavy defeat in municipal elections in March, and the president's pep talk was supposed to reinvigorate the troops.

Instead, the GM bill left the government red-faced and revealed deep cracks within the ruling majority.

As well as causing trouble for the government, the GM bill has drawn criticism from a wide spectrum of interest groups on both sides of the debate.

Environmentalists say it blurs the line between natural and GM foods to the detriment of farmers and consumers, while advocates of GM crops say it does not go far enough in protecting biotech companies from sabotage.

Opinion polls show a vast majority of French people are opposed to GM crops because they have not seen enough proof that such crops pose no risk to consumers and the environment.

Campaign group France Nature Environnement criticised the decision to re-submit the bill unchanged, saying legislators had lost a golden opportunity to take into account the disquiet about the bill and work on an improved version. (Writing by Estelle Shirbon)