In response to the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) judgment in 2018 that GMOs derived from new technologies are GMOs and therefore fall under GMO legislation, the European Commission published a study on new genomic techniques on Thursday 29 April to show that these new GMOs can contribute to sustainable food production.
According to this study, the current legislation on GMOs adopted in 2001 (Directive 2001/18/EC on the deliberate release of GMOs into the environment) is not suitable for these innovative technologies, such as the technique of genetic forcing.
On the basis of this study, which was requested by the Council of the EU, the Commission intends to launch a debate with EU citizens and policy makers on the future regulation of ‘new genomic techniques’. The Agriculture Council will discuss this in May.
According to the CJEU, GMOs derived from certain mutagenesis techniques having the same effects as transgenesis and which appeared after 2001 are covered by the obligations of the GMO Directive (see EUROPE 12071/8, 12070/6).
“The study we are publishing concludes that new genomic techniques can support the sustainability of agricultural production, in line with the objectives of our ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy. With the safety of consumers and the environment as a guiding principle, the time has come to have an open dialogue with citizens, Member States and the European Parliament to decide together on the way forward for the use of these biotechnologies in the EU”, says Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides in a statement.
The study caused an uproar among NGOs. Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) sees this as the result of a decade-long lobbying campaign by industry and GMO developers to deregulate GMOs and, in particular, new techniques.
“DG SANTE has clearly listened more to the biotech lobby than to anyone else. Its study on new GMOs is yet another example of the corporate capture of EU decision-making. This started right from the Commission’s extremely biased stakeholder consultation that fed into this study, favouring industry voices”, according to CEO researcher Nina Holland.
Greenpeace criticised the Commission for paving the way for these new GMOs, noting that “the EU has a responsibility to protect the rights of farmers to choose what they plant and for people to choose what they eat, and to protect the environment and biodiversity from potential harm from new GMOs”.
At the end of March, 162 representatives of civil society, farmers and companies had asked the Commission’s executive vice-president in charge of the Green Deal, Frans Timmermans, to oppose any weakening of the GMO regulation and to ensure the full implementation of the Court of Justice judgment, in line with the precautionary principle.
See the Commission’s study: https://bit.ly/3eETR8S (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)