Ms. MEP Dorette Corbey had invited experts, who agreed that environmental criteria are more likely to prove WTO-compatible than social criteria. A few interesting observations were:

1) Bas Eickhout of the Netherlands Envir. Assessment Agency, predicted that liberalization of agriculture would free up more land for biofuel production (because more food production would emigrate).

2) Greg Archer described the innovative U.K. plan for a Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership www.lowCVP.org.uk

3) Neil Judd, director of ProForest.net, with experience from the Forest Stewardship Council FSC, compared the range of social criteria applied by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (Lausanne), the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) in the U.K. and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. The paper cited below on the RTFO is typically pessimistic about the WTO compatibility of social criteria, but sees an opportunity in engaging companies to monitor social aspects through reporting, which is a gentler type of discrimination than rejection or exclusion: "The RTFO achieves this through encouraging reporting against social principles[,] as excluding feedstock that fails to meet social criteria is not possible under WTO rules" (Section 6. "SOCIAL ISSUES", 6.1  "Managing social issues through RTFO reporting"), Memorandum submitted by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmenvaud/76/7112008.htm

The Commission appears to be reconsidering its position according to Euractiv on 14th March.

"The UK's chief environment scientist [Professor Robert Watson] has called for a delay to a policy demanding inclusion of biofuels into fuel at pumps across the UK," reports the BBC on 24th March. "...Many will question why energy experts promoting biofuels in the EU were allowed to go unchallenged so long by the views on biofuels of agriculture specialists or soil scientists."