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Euro MPs have voted to give EU member states more flexibility to restrict or ban genetically modified crops on environmental or health grounds.

The draft legislation, still to be discussed by EU governments, would enable countries to go beyond the EU-wide mechanism for regulating GM crops.

Arguments about the safety of GM foods continue in many of the EU’s 27 states.

The EU Commission had proposed that the EU should decide on approvals or bans on environmental or health grounds.

Currently a type of maize called MON 810 is the only GM food cultivated commercially in the EU.

But not everywhere – it is banned in six EU states: Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary and Luxembourg.

A report approved by MEPs on Tuesday says member states “may adopt measures restricting or prohibiting the cultivation of all or particular GMOs [genetically modified organisms], in all or part of their territory, on the basis of grounds relating to the public interest.

“Those measures may be based on grounds relating to environmental or other legitimate factors such as socio-economic impacts.”