GMO deregulation: Agreement in EU trilogue

In the night of 3 to 4 Decem­ber, nego­tia­tors from the EU Par­lia­ment, Coun­cil of Min­is­ters and Com­mis­sion reached an agree­ment on a far-reach­ing dereg­u­la­tion of plants engi­neered with new GM tech­niques such as CRISPR/Cas. Under the deal, almost all require­ments of EU GMO leg­is­la­tion would be abol­ished for this type of GM plants.

Genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) plants that meet the cri­te­ria of the so-called “NGT Cat­e­go­ry 1” are to be placed on the mar­ket with­out con­sumer labelling, trace­abil­i­ty, or risk assess­ment. This cat­e­go­ry cov­ers GM plants in which few­er than 20 changes “per mono­ploid genome” have been made. The organ­i­sa­tion Test­biotech says these cri­te­ria „make no sense from a sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tive”. They only serve to “exempt the vast major­i­ty of NGT plants from the cur­rent EU GMO reg­u­la­tion.“  

For these GM plants, man­u­fac­tur­ers would no longer have to pro­vide any ana­lyt­i­cal detec­tion meth­ods. Require­ments for envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing would also be scrapped. The offi­cial expla­na­tion is that these GM plants are broad­ly the same as con­ven­tion­al­ly bred plants. Nev­er­the­less, patent law will con­tin­ue to apply – regard­less of whether these GM plants are “com­pa­ra­ble to con­ven­tion­al­ly bred plants” or not.

In the EU nego­ti­a­tions, the Coun­cil and the Com­mis­sion ulti­mate­ly pushed through their posi­tions, while the Par­lia­ment offered lit­tle resis­tance. This was despite the fact that the Par­lia­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed in favour of con­sumer labelling for prod­ucts derived from NGT1 plants and for a ban on patents cov­er­ing traits and plants that “could have been pro­duced through con­ven­tion­al plant breed­ing.” For Jan Plagge, Pres­i­dent of IFOAM Organ­ics Europe, it was “dif­fi­cult to under­stand how Parliament’s nego­tia­tors could sim­ply back away from the Euro­pean Parliament’s clear demands to pro­tect Euro­pean SMEs and food sov­er­eign­ty.”

What is new in the EU deal is that GM plants would only be clas­si­fied as “NGT1” if the genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion is not intend­ed to make them her­bi­cide-tol­er­ant or cause them to pro­duce a “known insec­ti­ci­dal sub­stance”. Ini­tial­ly, the Coun­cil – dri­ven by France – want­ed only her­bi­cide-tol­er­ant GM plants to be exclud­ed.

Under the EU deal, only NGT1 seed would still have to be labelled, while final food prod­ucts would not. This runs direct­ly counter to the inter­ests of con­sumers in Ger­many. Accord­ing to a sur­vey by the Fed­er­al Agency for Nature Con­ser­va­tion (BfN), 94 per­cent of adults want foods pro­duced using new GM tech­niques to be clear­ly labelled at the point of sale.

The Fed­er­a­tion of Ger­man Con­sumer Organ­i­sa­tions (VZBV) con­firms this: “Sur­veys show—and we also see this in our coun­selling work—that this is impor­tant to many peo­ple.” The food retail­er Rewe there­fore views the deci­sion “crit­i­cal­ly” and wants to exam­ine “pos­si­ble impacts.” The com­pa­ny empha­sized: “In the inter­ests of our cus­tomers, we advo­cate free­dom of choice and trans­paren­cy along the entire val­ue chain.” Rewe is the sec­ond-largest food retail­er in Ger­many after Ede­ka.

On the issue of patents, nego­tia­tors sought to improve legal cer­tain­ty for breed­ers and farm­ers with a few min­i­mal safe­guards. An expert group is to mon­i­tor devel­op­ments, and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion is to devel­op a code of con­duct for licens­ing.

The Ger­man Farm­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion (DBV), gen­er­al­ly a sup­port­er of new GM tech­niques, sees “a clear red line being crossed” when it comes to patents. It warned: “If key plant traits are monop­o­lised by indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies, our farm­ers and small and medi­um-sized breed­ers will lose access to impor­tant genet­ic mate­r­i­al.” The con­se­quences for agri­cul­ture could be far-reach­ing: “Less com­pe­ti­tion among breed­ers, ris­ing seed prices, and a decline in vari­eties’ diver­si­ty.”

A coali­tion bring­ing togeth­er the Ger­man Farm­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion (DBV), the Fed­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Ger­man Plant Breed­ers (BDP), the Fed­er­a­tion of the Organ­ic Food Indus­try (BÖLW), and oth­ers had called for an effec­tive restric­tion of patents.

In organ­ic farm­ing, the use of GM plants – includ­ing so-called NGT1 plants – remains pro­hib­it­ed. How­ev­er, if traces are “tech­ni­cal­ly unavoid­able” in organ­ic prod­ucts, this does “not con­sti­tute non-com­pli­ance”. The Ger­man Fed­er­a­tion of the Organ­ic Food Indus­try (BÖLW) stress­es: “Organ­ic remains safe.” It lam­bast­ed what it described as a “sell-out of Euro­pean plant breed­ing and agri­cul­ture to cor­po­rate inter­ests,” to the detri­ment of the Euro­pean food sec­tor.

The Asso­ci­a­tion for Food with­out Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing (VLOG) points out that meet­ing con­sumer demand for food with­out genet­ic engi­neer­ing would become sig­nif­i­cant­ly more bur­den­some, “mak­ing food even more expen­sive.” It also argues that abol­ish­ing labelling require­ments would “harm the entire Euro­pean food sec­tor, not just the ‘with­out genet­ic engi­neer­ing’ and organ­ic seg­ments.”

Organ­ic farmer Pola Krenkel from Bavaria fears: “If this pro­pos­al goes through as it stands, the future of GMO-free agri­cul­ture and the envi­ron­ment is at stake. We risk the full patent­ing of our basic resources. Farm­ers and breed­ers would have to deal with com­pli­cat­ed patent issues and legal disputes—an absolute night­mare.”

For the new law to take effect, the agree­ment must still be approved by a major­i­ty in both EU Par­lia­ment and Coun­cil. In Par­lia­ment, the rap­por­teur is unlike­ly to win a major­i­ty with­out the help of the far right. Many Social­ists want stricter rules, as do the Greens and the Left. Most polit­i­cal groups are split on the issue, the out­come is there­fore hard to pre­dict.

In the Coun­cil, a major­i­ty could also be nar­row. In March, the pre­vi­ous Ger­man gov­ern­ment did not sup­port the pro­posed GMO dereg­u­la­tion. How the cur­rent gov­ern­ment will act remains unclear. A spokesper­son for the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture referred Süd­deutsche Zeitung to the coali­tion agree­ment, which states the inten­tion to “pro­mote biotech­nol­o­gy as a key tech­nol­o­gy and facil­i­tate its appli­ca­tion through reg­u­la­tion, includ­ing with regard to new genom­ic tech­niques.”

In Ger­many and across Europe, envi­ron­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions, con­sumer pro­tec­tion groups, and organ­i­sa­tions rep­re­sent­ing the organ­ic sec­tor and small-scale farm­ers are unit­ed in oppos­ing GMO dereg­u­la­tion. More than 500,000 cit­i­zens are call­ing for exist­ing rules to be main­tained, includ­ing for new GM tech­niques such as the CRISPR/Cas “gene scis­sors.”

Save Our Seeds Save Our Seeds also took part in a joint protest in front of the Ger­man Chan­cellery.

Bild © Nick Jaus­si. Benedikt Haer­lin at the han­dover of a GMO peti­tion to the Ger­man Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture on 26 Novem­ber 2025.