Voting by experts on the EU's regulatory committee for the food chain and animal health resulted in an even 6-6 split with three abstentions on whether to allow Bt-11, a strain of genetically modified sweetcorn developed by Swiss firm Syngenta, onto the market.
Finland, Sweden, Ireland, UK, Netherlands, Spain voted in favour carrying 33 votes, and Greece, Denmark, France, Austria, Luxembourg, Portugal against with 29 votes. With 25 votes, Belgium, Italy and Germany abstained.
The tied vote means that the decision will now pass into the hands of agriculture ministers of the member states.
A mixed reaction followed the controversial vote that could have seen GM sweetmaize on the supermarket shelves within a few months.
"It's disappointing," Dr Simon Barber from the biotech industry body EuropaBio told FoodNavigator.com.
"I perceive it as a political vote, not one based on safety. Scientists in Europe have already shown that Bt11 is safe, and yet it failed to get authorisation." Bt11 received a positive scientific opinion in early 2002 from another EU committee, several months before the European Food Safety Authority came into existence.
But in the anti-GM camp, the vote was welcomed.
"We think the vote today is a good thing and shows that European governments are listening to the consumer," Eric Gall at the Greenpeace European Policy unit said to FoodNavigator.com.
"We hope that this is a wake up call for the Commission. Motivated by political pressure - WTO, the US - the Commission is using old rules [the Novel Foods regulation of 1997] to push through the authorisation," he added.
Greenpeace claims that the Bt11 authorisation vote should come under the new GM rules to enter into force in April 2004, not the 'old' novel foods regulation.
GM campaigner Claire Oxborrow at environmental group Friends of the Earth agreed. "We are very pleased with the way the vote went today, despite the Food Standards Agency vote [in favour of authorisation]. We are delighted that nine other European countries are erring on the side of caution," she said to FoodNavigator.com. "The Commission and member states should stand up for consumer safety," added Oxborrow.
Europe has been under some pressure from the United States to lift the GM moratorium, seen by the US as an troublesome trade barrier and a blow to its farmers. Earlier this year the US, along with Canada, took the issue to a World Trade Organisation dispute panel.
Clearly, when agriculture ministers from the member states sit down in the next 90 days and take the decision to end - or not - the biotech ban, political forces, and pressure, will be at play.