Crops tailor-made using new gene-splicing techniques should face fewer regulations than genetically modified organisms, EU negotiators agreed Thursday. 

Critics are calling it a GMO rebrand; proponents say they are bringing science back in style.

The late-night negotiations — dragged across the finish line with the help of the European Parliament’s far right — capped years of haggling over how to ease the path for a new generation of gene-editing technologies developed since 2001, when the EU’s notoriously strict regulations on GMOs were adopted.

The deal’s backers tout NGT’s potential to breed climate-resilient plants that need less space and fertilizers to grow, and they argue the EU is already behind global competitors using the technology. But critics fear the EU is opening the door to GMOs and giving too much power to major seed corporations.  

The agreement opens the door to “unlabelled — yet patented — GM crops and foods, boosting corporate market power while undermining the rights of farmers and consumers,” warned Franziska Achterberg of Save Our Seeds, an NGO opposing GMOs, calling the deal a “complete sell-out.”

Innovation vs. capitulation

European lawmakers, however, were responding to fears that outdated GMO rules were holding back progress on more recent genomic tweaks with a lighter touch — and throttling innovations worth trillions of euros. 

Currently, most plants edited using new precision breeding technology — which can involve reordering their DNA, or inserting genes from the same plant or species — are covered by the same strict rules governing GMOs that contain foreign DNA. 

The deal struck by the EU’s co-legislators creates two classes for these more recent techniques. “NGT1” crops — plants that have only been modified using new tech to a limited extent and are thus considered equivalent to naturally occurring strains — would be eligible for less stringent regulations.

In contrast, “NGT2” plants, which have had more genetic changes and traditional GMOs will continue to face the same rules that have been in place for over 20 years. 

Speaking before the final round of negotiations, Danish Agriculture Minister Jacob Jensen argued that the bloc needs to have NGTs in its toolbox if it wants to compete with China and the U.S., which are already making use of the new tech. 

The deal “is about giving European farmers a fair chance to keep up” echoed center-right MEP Jessica Polfjärd, the lead negotiator on the Parliament’s side of the deal. She added that the technology will allow for the bloc to “produce more yield on less land, reduce the use of pesticides, and plant crops that can resist climate change.”

Polfjärd had struggled to keep MEPs on the same page even as the bill advanced into interinstitutional negotiations. Persistent objections from left-wing lawmakers, including a key Socialist, forced her to embrace support of lawmakers from the far-right Patriots for Europe, breaking the cordon sanitaire. 

Martin Häusling, the Green parliamentary negotiator, called the result miserable, saying it gives a “carte blanche for the use of new genetic engineering in plants” that threatens GMO-free agriculture. 

David and Goliath

In a hard-won victory for industry, the final legislation allows for NGT crops to be patented. 

For Matthias Berninger, executive vice president at the global biotech giant Bayer, it’s just good business. “When we talk about startup culture in Europe … we also need to provide reasonable intellectual property protections,” he said in an interview.

Yet safeguards meant to prevent patent-holders from accumulating too much market power don’t go far enough for Arche Noah. The NGO advocating for seed diversity in Europe, warned of a “slow-motion collapse of independent breeding, seed-diversity and farmer autonomy” if the deal makes it to law as is.

They have MEP Christophe Clergeau, the Parliament’s Social-Democrat negotiator who led the last-ditch resistance.  In an interview on Thursday morning, he gave it five to 10 years before small breeders have disappeared from the bloc and farmers are “totally dependent” on the likes of Bayer and other huge companies. (Berninger said Bayer doesn’t want to inhibit small breeders by enforcing patents on them.)

The deal now needs to be endorsed by the Parliament and the Council of the EU before the new rules are adopted.

At the end of the day, it’s up to consumers to pass judgment, DG SANTE’s food safety and innovation chief Klaus Berend said Thursday, appearing at the POLITICO Sustainable Future Summit directly before the late-night negotiations began. 

“We know that in Europe, the general attitude toward genetically modified organisms and anything around it is rather negative,” he cautioned. The key question for new genomic techniques is “how will they be accepted by consumers?”

Their acceptance, Berend added, “is not a given.”

Rebecca Holland contributed to this report.