Europe has long been a bastion of skepticism about genetically engineered organisms, but today the European Parliament voted to lessen regulatory oversight of crops created through one type of DNA manipulation: gene editing.
Euroseeds, a trade organization of plant breeders, called the vote a “significant step forward” that would increase innovation and agricultural sustainability. Gene-edited plants can produce higher yields and better resist pests and pathogens, reducing the need for pesticides, for example. Yet Greenpeace and some opponents criticized the decision, saying it could lead to more powerful agricultural monopolies.
The legislation passed by a relatively narrow margin of 307 to 263, with 41 members abstaining. Support for the bill crossed party lines, but two major European voting blocs, including the Greens, solidly opposed it.
The measure must still be agreed to in negotiations with the European Union’s member states, which remain divided about whether to allow the patenting of gene-edited plants and require labels on food made from such crops.
Nevertheless, plant research advocates hailed the vote. “This is really encouraging for the scientific community,” says Oana Dima, managing director of European Sustainable Agriculture through Genome Editing (EU-SAGE), a network of more than 150 European research institutes, universities, and associations.
EU-SAGE began to advocate for regulatory reform in 2018, when the European Court of Justice ruled that plants created with the genome editor CRISPR and similar methods that alter existing DNA—referred to as ”new genomic technologies” (NGTs)—should be considered genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under EU law. Researchers argued that gene-edited crops should be exempt because unlike transgenic plants created by introducing foreign genes, they just have tweaks to their natural genes. The demanding regulatory framework for GMOs has contributed to very few such crops being approved in Europe for planting.
In 2019 the European Council, which represents member states, asked the EU’s administrative branch, known as the European Commission, to perform a study on new genomic techniques. The resulting document concluded that the EU’s existing GMO regulations were stifling innovation. In July 2023, the Commission published a regulatory proposal to ease the constraints on gene editing and introduced it in Parliament. The legislation would exempt NGTs from GMO legislation if the changes could have been made (albeit much more slowly) with conventional breeding. More complex genetic modifications, or those requiring foreign DNA, would remain regulated by the existing law.
Although Parliament has long seen considerable opposition to NGTs, Dima says several factors have lessened the resistance recently. The success of messenger RNA vaccines for COVID-19 has improved the reputation of biotechnology, she notes. Meanwhile, the rising threat of climate change to food production and supply chain issues related to the war in Ukraine have heightened appreciation for the potential of new plant breeding techniques.
Although the Parliament is now supportive of greenlighting gene-edited crops, some members want to prohibit patents on NGTs, arguing this would help keep costs low for farmers. Conventionally bred plants in Europe cannot be patented in Europe. Dima says the issue of patent protection should be discussed apart from the NGT legislation, and within the EU’s patent regulatory framework. “These are two different issues. And they should be totally separate.”
The Parliament also wants all NGT plants to be labeled when sold to consumers, whereas the Commission thinks biotech crops exempt from the GMO regulation should only have seeds labeled, so that farmers can be sure of what they are planting.
The Council has not yet agreed on its position about patents. Once it does, it will negotiate with the Commission and Parliament. Dima hopes this could happen before the parliamentary elections in June, but it would have to happen “very fast.”
On social media, the farm lobby Copa Cogeca appealed for the Council to act swiftly as well, calling NGTs “practical solutions that can help our agriculture reconcile production and adaptation to #climatechange while maintaining cutting-edge research in the EU.”