Citizens’ initiative calls for change to genetic modification laws

An officially recognised petition is seeking public support for changes to EU rules on genetically modified organisms, to lower restrictions on certain uses of “new plant-breeding techniques”.

The European Citizens’ Initiative—called Grow Scientific Progress: Crops matter—was approved by the European Commission on 3 July. Its organisers say the EU directive on genetically modified organisms, dating from 2001, is outdated and stifles scientific advancement.

The GMO directive has come under scrutiny since July 2018, when the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that new plant-breeding techniques developed since 2001 fall under the scope of the directive. The organisers of the citizens’ initiative say that the use of these techniques to create plants that could have developed naturally should not be regulated as stringently. This would be in line with regulation of conventional mutagenesis techniques such as radiation.