EU governments sign off on far-reaching GMO deregulation

Brus­sels, 19 Decem­ber 2025 – A qual­i­fied major­i­ty of EU Mem­ber States today backed the dereg­u­la­tion of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) plants pro­duced using so-called new genom­ic tech­niques (NGTs). Aus­tria, Bel­gium, Bul­gar­ia, Croa­t­ia, Ger­many, Hun­gary, Roma­nia, Slo­va­kia, and Slove­nia did not indi­cate sup­port dur­ing this morning’s meet­ing of the Com­mit­tee of Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (COREPER) in Brus­sels.

Franziska Achter­berg, Head of Pol­i­cy at Save Our Seeds, com­ment­ed:

Now it is con­firmed: most EU gov­ern­ments want to allow untest­ed and unla­belled GM plants to be released into the envi­ron­ment and onto our plates, putting both peo­ple and nature at risk. In doing so, they are sid­ing with multi­na­tion­al biotech cor­po­ra­tions – at the expense of farm­ers, the food sec­tor, con­sumers, and the envi­ron­ment. It is now up to the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment to reject this deal.

Since 2023, the EU has been dis­cussing plans to dereg­u­late genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) plants pro­duced with so-called “new genom­ic tech­niques” (NGTs). The aim is to exempt most of these plants from exist­ing EU require­ments for GMOs, includ­ing manda­to­ry con­sumer labelling, trace­abil­i­ty, risk assess­ment, and the sub­mis­sion of ana­lyt­i­cal detec­tion meth­ods. At the same time, patent­ing would remain ful­ly per­mit­ted.

Today, the Com­mit­tee of Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (COREPER) held an infor­mal vote on the out­come of the EU tri­logue nego­ti­a­tions. The EU Coun­cil of Min­is­ters must now for­mal­ly con­firm this vote at min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el. The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment also still needs to approve the plans. The first vote in the Envi­ron­ment Com­mit­tee is sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 2026, with a ple­nary deci­sion like­ly to fol­low in March. Since most Social Democ­rats, Greens, and Left MEPs oppose GMO dereg­u­la­tion, a major­i­ty in Par­lia­ment can only be achieved with sup­port of the far-right.

The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion has recent­ly pre­sent­ed two pro­pos­als that would fur­ther weak­en EU GMO reg­u­la­tions. On 16 Decem­ber, it unveiled plans to exempt GM microor­gan­isms used in fer­men­ta­tion process­es from EU GMO rules, even if residues may still be present in the final prod­uct. In a sep­a­rate pro­pos­al, the Com­mis­sion aims to cre­ate a “low-risk” cat­e­go­ry of GM microor­gan­isms released into the envi­ron­ment, which would be sub­ject to reduced reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments.

Con­tact: Franziska Achter­berg – Head of Pol­i­cy and Advo­ca­cy at Save Our Seeds, +32 498 362403,

Save Our Seeds is a cam­paign run by the Foun­da­tion on Future Farm­ing. Since 2002, it has suc­cess­ful­ly spear­head­ed efforts to avoid GMO con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of seeds and main­tain pre­cau­tion­ary GMO leg­is­la­tion at nation­al and EU lev­els. Cur­rent cam­paigns also include efforts to Stop Gene Dri­ves.

Image © Euro­pean Union. Meet­ing of Deputy Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Coun­cil build­ing in Brus­sels.