GMO deregulation: European Parliament approves new rules

The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment today vot­ed to endorse the out­come of tri­logue nego­ti­a­tions on the EU’s pro­posed leg­is­la­tion for genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied plants devel­oped using so-called new genom­ic tech­niques (NGTs). Under the new rules, many plants engi­neered with gene edit­ing tech­niques such as CRISPR/Cas will fall out­side EU GMO law, mean­ing require­ments for envi­ron­men­tal risk assess­ment, trace­abil­i­ty mea­sures and con­sumer labelling will no longer apply.

More than 40 amend­ments were tabled ahead of the ple­nary vote, but none had the sup­port of a major­i­ty of com­po­nent Mem­bers of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment (MEPs). This means law­mak­ers sup­port­ed the agree­ment reached between nego­tia­tors from the Par­lia­ment, Coun­cil and Euro­pean Com­mis­sion in Decem­ber.

The pro­posed law is now set to be pub­lished in the EU’s Offi­cial Jour­nal. It will apply after a two-year tran­si­tion­al peri­od. Many legal and tech­ni­cal remain to be answered, includ­ing pro­tec­tions for organ­ic and non-GMO pro­duc­tion. The new law may also be chal­lenged in Court as it appears to be incom­pat­i­ble with the EU’s pre­cau­tion­ary prin­ci­ple and inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions.  

Save Our Seeds team in Strasbourg

In the run-up to the ple­nary vote, our team spent two days on the ground in Stras­bourg, attend­ing the Envi­ron­ment Com­mit­tee vote and join­ing farm­ers, breed­ers, bee­keep­ers, envi­ron­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions and con­sumer groups for a protest out­side the Par­lia­ment.

Monday’s meet­ing of the Envi­ron­ment Com­mit­tee already gave a hint of the direc­tion the debate would take. Under the watch­ful eyes of numer­ous lob­by­ists from the agri­cul­tur­al and biotech indus­tries, MEPs decid­ed in a pro­ce­dur­al vote to ignore the 37 amend­ments pre­sent­ed in ear­ly May, and to sup­port the tri­logue deal by 58 to 31 votes. Numer­ous com­mit­tee mem­bers had been replaced by alter­nates to con­ceal con­flicts with­in the major polit­i­cal groups.

On Tues­day, we demon­strat­ed in front of the Par­lia­ment along­side 200 farm­ers, bee­keep­ers, breed­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of envi­ron­men­tal and con­sumer groups against the planned dereg­u­la­tion. Our team deliv­ered the demands of more than 600,000 cit­i­zens from across Europe: Main­tain GMO labelling and stop patents on seeds!

Last-minute pressure on MEPs

In the run-up to the vote, Ger­man farmer organ­i­sa­tions – includ­ing AbL and DBV – warned that the pro­pos­al could trig­ger a surge in patents on seeds and plant vari­eties. Their calls for MEPs to back amend­ments aimed at address­ing patent con­cerns were large­ly ignored.

More than 200,000 cit­i­zens also emailed Mem­bers of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, demand­ing changes to the leg­is­la­tion and, in par­tic­u­lar, the reten­tion of truth­ful food labelling. Many also called the MEPs on the phone to implore them to vote these amend­ments. Despite these appeals, a major­i­ty of MEPs chose not to sup­port the pro­posed amend­ments, and to wave through the bad tri­logue deal.

Sup­port­ers of the new law argue that new GM tech­nolo­gies are need­ed to devel­op drought-tol­er­ant crop vari­eties that can help farm­ers adapt to cli­mate change. An indus­try coali­tion led by Euroseeds said the deci­sion was a “major mile­stone” at a time when “Euro­pean agri­cul­ture faces increas­ing cli­mate, envi­ron­men­tal & mar­ket chal­lenges,” and “access to bet­ter per­form­ing crop vari­eties is essen­tial to ensure food secu­ri­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness.” How­ev­er, a recent report by the Euro­pean Non-GMO Asso­ci­a­tion (ENGA) sug­gests that such crops remain elu­sive even in coun­tries with min­i­mal GMO reg­u­la­tions.

The organ­ic move­ment pledged to con­tin­ue work­ing with­out GMOs. Accord­ing to Jan Plagge, IFOAM Organ­ics Europe pres­i­dent: “The organ­ic move­ment remains com­mit­ted to pro­duc­ing food with­out GMOs and with­out NGTs, and will con­tin­ue to engage in sys­temic and open-source agroe­co­log­i­cal inno­va­tion to make whole farm­ing sys­tems more sus­tain­able. The alleged ben­e­fits of NGTs are based on pure spec­u­la­tion, and we urge pol­i­cy-mak­ers to pay more atten­tion to who con­trols the tech­nolo­gies they choose to dereg­u­late, and to the impact of tech­nolo­gies like NGTs on Euro­pean food sov­er­eign­ty.”

A sad day for democracy and science

Whilst today’s deci­sion marks a tru­ly sad day for democ­ra­cy and sci­ence, Benedikt Haer­lin, Coor­di­na­tor at Save Our Seeds, reminds us that the indus­try lobby’s suc­cess does not resolve the long­stand­ing con­cerns among Euro­pean con­sumers and farm­ers about GMOs in food and agri­cul­ture: “What today’s vote makes legal­ly pos­si­ble – the mar­ket­ing of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops with­out labelling and with­out fur­ther safe­ty test­ing – has by no means been accept­ed by farm­ers and con­sumers. Today’s dis­re­gard for the wish­es and con­cerns of the vast major­i­ty of the EU pop­u­la­tion could there­fore once again prove to be a deci­sive mis­take.”

Find out here which MEPs sup­port­ed amend­ments to intro­duce con­sumer labelling and to restrict patents.

Fur­ther reac­tions to the vote:

Friends of the Earth Europe: EU law­mak­ers scrap basic rights for con­sumers, breed­er, food sec­tor

Arche Noah: NGT Vote: Euro­pean Par­lia­ment opens the flood­gates to a wave of patents 

Test­biotech: NGT plants: the EU fails to take the right deci­sions

Pho­to ©Annemarie Volling (AbL) — Save Our Seeds Team, Franziska Achter­berg and Ali­na Banse in front of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment