Government officials in Paris began studying the report from AFSSA, the national food safety agency, late yesterday afternoon and the prime minister, Lionel Jospin, said he would announce a decision on whether to lift the ban by tomorrow.
"AFSSA did exactly what it was supposed to," Mr Jospin said. "It gave us a decision that enlightened us, that gave us new elements."
The European commission has started legal action against France over its continuing embargo, which flouts an EU ruling last August - since confirmed by commission veterinary experts - that the measures put in place by British farmers after the mad cow crisis meant British beef was safe for export.
Under a draft agreement reached last month, the British government claimed it had done no more than "clarify" the new health and safety measures, while France said it had won important concessions on labelling and testing.
The commission made it clear that France would be able to stick a "British" label on all beef exported from the UK under the date-based export scheme, clearing a stumbling block for France which, like other EU countries, cannot ordinarily oblige any exporter to label meat with its country of origin.
In a statement, AFSSA, which provoked the beef war in October by saying it was still concerned about the potential health risk to French consumers from British beef, said the existing measures taken by the British authorities and the EU commission against BSE "are indeed limiting the risk of the disease's spread".
But it also said the measures did not guarantee the disease would be eradicated. The agency advised the French government to make sure that any decision to lift the ban could be reversed, "to make it possible to immediately put an end to any risk... which could arise at a later stage".
An AFSSA source said the agency's report, which the government requested late last month, was "neither for nor against - it leaves the government the option to either maintain or lift the ban".
All EU member states except France have already agreed to import British beef, but several non-EU states, including the United States, have decided to maintain their bans for the time being.
