In a working document dated 3 July to be submitted to the Member States at a meeting on 19 July, the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the EU appears to want to restart the debate on the proposal governing the use of new genomic techniques (NGT).
While only the issue of the patentability of NGT plants seemed to stand in the way, during the last debates, of the EU Council finding a common position on this sensitive issue, Hungary is suggesting that discussions be started up again on a number of other issues, such as labelling, controls and equivalence criteria (see EUROPE 13450/13).
The initial proposal provides for two categories of NGT plants: the first contains plants considered to be conventional, while the second contains those that must comply with strict rules (such as those applied to GMOs). The Hungarian Presidency believes that the criteria proposed by the Commission “might not be sufficient for establishing similarity” between NGT 1 and plants grown using traditional methods.
The Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council is also reopening the debate on other aspects of the legislation, such as labelling requirements and the coexistence of NGT crops with organic farming. Budapest notes that several Member States want mandatory labelling rules for NGT 1 (limited to seeds in the Commission’s proposal) to be extended to foodstuffs and other products “to ensure transparency along the entire production chain”. The Hungarians argue that separating gene-edited crops from organic production may prove difficult.
Link to the Hungarian document: https://aeur.eu/f/d0o
EFSA opinion. In addition, on Wednesday 10 July, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a scientific opinion (https://aeur.eu/f/d0p ) on the 2023 analysis of the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) questioning some of the Commission’s criteria for dividing NGT crops into two categories.
The French agency found that the criteria used to consider NGT 1 crops as equivalent to their conventional counterparts had “no scientific basis” (see EUROPE 13388/3).
EFSA concluded that the European Commission’s rules (essentially based on the number of genetic modifications in the crop) were “scientifically justified”. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)