Europe’s fields are not made for a two degree warmer world. Climate change, noticeable to everyone in the mild winters and dry summers of recent years, is already making life difficult for farmers today. In the future, it will make pest infestations and plant diseases more likely and lead to more crop failures. When the water rises on the coasts and the deserts grow on the continents, the area that can be used for agriculture shrinks globally. At the same time, the world population continues to grow, especially in the Global South. In the opinion of the EU Commission, it is therefore not enough to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases: it also relies on genetically modified plants.
At the end of this week, the draft of a law made the rounds, with which the Commission intends to pave the way for the use of novel genetic engineering in agriculture. It is to be officially presented at the beginning of July and could still be modified. But the direction is clear: Green genetic engineering should become part of everyday life in the food supply chains of the EU, should be the answer to global warming, population growth and excessive dependence on imports.
New genetic engineering methods (NGT) is a collective term for all those technologies that were invented after 2001, the year of the first EU genetic engineering regulation. The draft law aims in particular at such changes in the genome with which plants can be precisely manipulated. In contrast to established methods, developers do not use gene sequences from foreign species with which a plant cannot be crossed. It’s kind of a middle ground: more than crossing two plants, but less than programming new gene sequences. In certain cases, genetic changes caused by NGTs could no longer be identified with the known analytical methods.
Which brings us to what environmental groups, some agricultural associations and politicians, especially the Greens, consider fatal. Firstly, the draft provides for plants with up to 20 genetic modifications to be treated on an equal footing with conventional plants. However, the number is still in square brackets in the draft, so it still has to be discussed. Second, the text states that EU Member States may not prohibit or restrict “the deliberate release or placing on the market of NGT type 1 plants and related products” through “specific requirements”. Targeted barriers for these new breeds, such as regional cultivation bans, would thus be ruled out.
“The proposal would be the end of organic farming, which would have to protect itself from contamination with ever more effort,” says Karl Bär, agricultural politician for the Greens in the Bundestag. What’s true: If NGT plants were used across the board, it would actually be almost impossible to prevent the fields of neighboring organic farmers from getting some of them. “If the proposal goes through, the right to GMO-free production and the precautionary principle applicable in the EU would be undermined,” criticizes Annemarie Volling, genetic engineering expert at the working group for rural agriculture.
The argument goes as far as personal hostilities
The draft law comes at a turbulent time, because in Brussels MPs, commissioners and ministers are currently wrestling with all means for the future of agriculture. This is mainly due to the European People’s Party (EPP), led by CSU politician Manfred Weber. Alarmed by the rise of the Dutch peasant-citizen movement, the EPP wants to be seen as the protector of rural areas. That is why legislative projects are now being fought that are presumably perceived by agriculture as an impertinence.
A first attempt by the EPP to completely scuttle the Nature Restoration Act in Parliament narrowly failed this week. The argument goes as far as personal hostilities. The EPP accused Frans Timmermans, Commissioner responsible for environmental and climate issues, of putting pressure on individual MPs and threatening that if the EPP maintained its position, he would stop the new genetic engineering regulation. In the vicinity of Timmermans, this is strongly denied. However, there is a connection to the plan to reduce the use of pesticides in the EU by 50 percent by 2030: This law has also been rejected so far, especially by the CDU and CSU in Brussels.
Timmermans, a Social Democrat, recently said in a speech in Parliament that one cannot be separated from the other. A law that allows new genetic engineering will not be accepted by the public if it does not bring recognizable benefits for the environment. That is why the EU must also show that it is serious about its promise that European agriculture will use significantly fewer pesticides. Timmermans recommended the package consisting of reducing pesticides and opening up genetic engineering as a means of reconciling interests in parliament.
Only when there is an agreement within Parliament can the final negotiations with the Council of Member States begin in the Brussels legislative process. Negotiations on the pesticide law are also stalling there. Many governments, including the German one, have concerns. It remains to be seen whether a link with new genetic engineering will get things moving in the negotiations. Time is running out for all laws, because the procedures take months. And in June next year the European elections will take place.