On Monday, 20 December, EU Member States’ environment ministers expressed their belief that it is of the utmost importance that the level of safety of all GMOs—including plants obtained by mutagenesis and cisgenesis—remains high for humans and animals as well as for the environment by applying the precautionary principle.
On the occasion of an informal exchange in front of cameras, they agreed with the call from Austria, supported by Luxembourg, Cyprus, and Hungary, for the regulation of plants obtained from new genomic technologies (see EUROPE 12801/6 and 12786/12).
The Austrian minister emphasised that the safety of people and the environment must be guaranteed by a risk analysis. “The sustainability analysis that the [European] Commission is talking about must be transparent and based on scientific criteria, and consumers’ freedom of choice must be guaranteed by ensuring a reliable and comprehensive traceability and labelling system”, she declared.
“We need a comprehensive, inclusive risk analysis, as is the case for GMOs”, the minister from Luxembourg added.
The Hungarian minister expressed his regret that the European Commission’s impact assessment focuses on the benefits of such products or organisms, “which has not yet been fully demonstrated. And this study did not put sufficient emphasis on proper labelling, even though it is important to us that citizens have all the information they need to make informed decisions about the products that are presented for consumption—for themselves and their children”.
Affirming that her government’s coalition agreement “attaches the utmost importance to these issues”, the German minister declared, “the possible effects of these new techniques, their impact on the environment, on plants... all of this needs to be analysed from a scientific point of view, from a perspective of sustainability. In our opinion, scientific analysis must prevail in this matter, and the precautionary principle must be applied to marketing authorisations, while bearing in mind the links with human health and the environment”. She added that Germany is, moreover, aiming for 30% of farming in its territory to be organic.
“We have a precautionary principle that is already well established in European environmental legislation, and we must not weaken this principle”, declared the Bulgarian minister. He added, “We therefore call on the [European] Commission to provide us with more information on the criteria and methodology as well as on the sustainability analysis”.
It should be noted that, in 2020, none of the EU Member States objected to the European Commission’s proposal that the EU derogate from its own strict rules on the environmental and health risk assessment of GMOs as far as Covid-19 vaccines are concerned (see EUROPE 12528/33). These are now administered to the general population with a conditional marketing authorisation.
See the information note from Austria: https://bit.ly/3J8hsx6 (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)