Legislation

Throw out EU food supplement laws, court aide says

5 April 2005

(Reuters) - Controversial European Union laws limiting food supplements are "seriously deficient," create a procedure with the transparency "of a black box," and should be annulled, an adviser to the EU's top court said on Tuesday.

In a stinging indictment of EU rules on food supplements and vitamins, which opponents say could outlaw thousands of health food products, the European Court of Justice's Advocate General Leendert Geelhoed said they broke basic principles of EU law.

The EU's 2002 directive will limit vitamin and mineral supplements to an approved list from August.

Campaigners said the law could, based on scant scientific evidence, ban more than 5,000 products including the main natural forms of Vitamin E and several forms of Vitamin C.

"I must conclude the (EU legislature) has seriously failed in its duty to design such a far-reaching measure with all due care," Advocate General Geelhoed wrote.

"The Directive infringes the principle of proportionality, because basic principles of (EU) law, such as the requirements of legal protection, of legal certainty and of sound administration have not been taken into account."

Geelhoed recommended the Court rule the law was invalid.

The Alliance for Natural Health, one of three groups that originally brought the case in Britain, called the opinion "tremendous news ... for the millions of people in Europe who choose to use food supplements."

The Court is not obliged to follow its advocate generals' opinions but does so in four out of five cases, usually several months later.

Geelhoed said the directive was "seriously deficient" because it did not give a norm for decisions to add supplements to the approved list; did not make it clear if firms could submit substances for approval; and gave no clear procedure for any such submission.

BLACK BOX

"In short, this procedure, in so far as it may exist and in so far as it may deserve this title, has the transparency of a black box," Geelhoed wrote.

It did not explain how interested parties could be heard, set any deadlines for decision making or even guarantee decisions on proposed substances would be taken, he said.

But Geelhoed said the principle of an approved list was valid, and the law rested on the right legal pillar: harmonising the EU's internal market rather than health concerns.

He said if EU lawmakers corrected the deficiencies that he had pointed out, the law could become valid.

Commission spokesman Philip Tod said it would need to look closely at the advocate general's opinion.

"We would prefer, I would imagine, before giving any detailed reaction to wait for the final opinion of the Court," Tod said.

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