EU unable to approve new gene-editing plans in current mandate

The approval of much-anticipated legislation relaxing the EU’s strict rules on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), will have to wait until the next legislative mandate, Belgian Agriculture Minister David Clarinval confirmed in the margins of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council (AGRIFISH) on Tuesday’s (26 March). 

“We do not have enough time left to finalise negotiations with the European Parliament,” said Clarinval in a press conference after the AGRIFISH meeting.

He stressed, however, that the Presidency would continue to work towards reaching a common position among EU countries during the remainder of its mandate.

These advanced scientific methods, frequently hailed as a sustainability breakthrough, enable targeted and fast changes to the genome of crops, with the potential to make them more resistant to extreme weather and pests, along with other uses.

But negotiations on the NGTs regulation, unveiled by the European Commission in July 2023, have been stuck at Council since December.

At the time, the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council failed to broker an agreement among member states, as concerns over traceability, labelling and patents of gene-edited food persisted. 

The issue was raised during Tuesday’s ministerial meeting by Spain’s Agriculture Minister Luis Planas, a staunch advocate of NGTs for food and feed production. 

During the discussion, Planas told his counterparts that NGTs could be the solution to the challenges currently faced by the bloc’s farmers, notably climate change, rising production costs and geopolitical instability.

“We need to have all the tools at our disposal [that] allow us to provide solutions to problems such as the lack of water, pressure from new diseases and pests…” he stressed, describing the Commission’s proposal as “scientifically sound.”

Some national representatives supported the Spanish stance, with the Dutch delegation calling for a launch of negotiations with the Parliament “as soon as possible.” 

“Other countries outside the EU already have regulations in place for these plants or are in the process of developing, the risk of lagging behind is that [the EU] will lose its leading position,” stated the Dutch Agriculture Minister Piet Adema.

Remaining concerns

A blocking minority of member states – including Poland, Austria, Croatia and Slovakia – are still reluctant to endorse the legislation. 

Among the most contested points is the patentability of NGTs, which some countries say should be banned to ensure equal access to breeding material among farmers. 

Other key questions are the criteria to divide NGT-based products into two categories (NGT 1 and 2) and labelling requirements. 

“The lack of labelling for products falling into NGT1 [would] represent a huge attack on the freedom to choose for our consumers,” said the Austrian delegation during the discussion in the Council.

Upcoming opinion

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is expected to give an opinion on the EU executive’s proposal, after the European Parliament sent a letter on 22 February, asking for an examination of a report published in December by the French health authority (ANSES).

ANSES’s study questioned some of the European Commission’s criteria for classifying plant varieties obtained with NGTs.

[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro and Rajnish Singh]

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