Following today’s vote in the European Parliament, there will no longer be any specific safety assessments, labelling requirements for food and feed, or traceability in the environment for most genetically modified crops. This failure of democratic discourse on technology undermines the credibility of organised science and the already limited trust in the integrity of politics.
A plenary vote scheduled for 19 May has been postponed after MEPs tabled 37 amendments to the compromise deal hammered out between negotiators from Parliament, Council and Commission in December. The delay gives NGOs, businesses and citizens more time to pressure MEPs to improve the deal.
On 21 April, the Council of Ministers formally adopted the outcome of trilogue negotiations on the EU’s proposed new legislation for genetically modified plants developed with so-called new genomic techniques (NGTs). Save Our Seeds is calling on European citizens to urge their Members of the European Parliament to reject the bill.
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.
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.
Berlin, 2 December 2025 — An alliance of environmental and farming organisations protested today outside the Federal Chancellery against plans to deregulate genetically modified plants created with new genetic modification (GM) techniques. The groups urged the German government to reject any deal emerging from tomorrow’s EU trilogue negotiations unless essential safeguards are included.
At present, only three genetically modified crops developed with new techniques such as CRISPR/Cas are on the market worldwide. That’s the key finding of the New GMOs Market Report, published by the European Non-GMO Industry Association (ENGA) and the US-based Non-GMO Project.
Following the publication of our report “When Chatbots Breed New Plant Varieties”, experts used a publicly accessible AI tool to design a genetically modified (GM) plant with novel insecticidal properties. The experiment shows that the EU’s proposed legislation on new genomic techniques (NGT) would fail to protect the environment from serious harm if it does not take emerging technological capabilities into account.
As stakeholders in the agri-food sector, we call on EU policymakers to ensure the freedom of choice and rights for consumers, supply chain operators, farmers and breeders by upholding mandatory labelling of new GMOs obtained by new genomic techniques (NGTs) as well as traceability across the entire value chain.
Civil society organisations from across Europe have issued a joint statement urging EU decision makers to uphold mandatory labelling and traceability for genetically modified plants developed through new genomic techniques (NGTs), such as CRISPR/Cas.