Brussels, 22/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - Greenpeace, CEO (Corporate Europe Observatory) and GeneWatch UK have accused the European Commission of shelving a legal opinion confirming that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) produced through gene-editing and other new techniques fall under EU GMO law, following pressure from the US government. EU GMO law requires safety testing and labelling (see EUROPE 11248).
To back up their allegation, the three NGOs published a series of internal Commission documents on Thursday 21 April. These documents, obtained under freedom of information rules, reveal intense lobbying by US representatives for the EU to disregard its own GMO rules.
New breeding techniques include oligonucleotides techniques, nucleases (nuclease restrictions) and direct intervention in gene regulation (epigenetics).
According to an announcement by the Commission's DG Health and Food Safety, the legal opinion was expected at the end of 2015. There has been one delay after another and the report is still to be published.
Among other evidence, the documents show that, ahead of their meeting with DG Health Deputy Director General Ladislav Miko on 7 October, the US authorities, through the US mission to the EU, warned the Commission of the risk of inflicting “another blow to agriculture and technology”.
They reveal that both the US mission to the EU and the ESA (European Seed Association) had announced that the legal opinion would be released on 19 November 2015, before DG Health decided to defer publication. On 3 November, the US mission sent a letter to the Commission warning it of “unjustified regulatory hurdles” for new breeding techniques. The documents show, too, that, after meetings with US representatives, the Commission said, in January 2016, that the opinion would be completed in the first quarter of 2016 - a deadline that has been passed without any further indication of a new date of publication.
Greenpeace, CEO and GeneWatch UK see the shadow of TTIP over all of this. In the words of US Trade Representative Mickael Froman himself: “The United States continues to press the EU for fundamental improvements in its regulatory system with the goal of normalizing trade in agricultural products derived from modern biotechnology”. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)