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EU Governments Agree on Negotiating Mandate for NGTs

EU Governments Agree on Negotiating Mandate for NGTs

By Clement Dionglay

April 2, 2025

In July 2023, the European Commission launched the Proposal on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) and Plant Reproductive Material (EU Proposal). The proposal, which was suggested by the Council of the European Union (EU) in 2019, aims to boost innovation and sustainability within the EU's agrifood sector while contributing to food security and reducing external dependencies. The regulation is set to ensure robust protection for human, animal, and environmental health while guaranteeing that the plant breeding sector is safe, transparent, and competitive.

The Proposal aims to adapt the EU to the technological developments of the past decades and create two distinct pathways for NGT plants to be placed on the market:

Category 1 NGT plants: could occur naturally or through conventional breeding methods; they would be exempted from the rules currently set out in the GMO legislation and would not be labeled; however, seeds produced through those techniques would have to be labeled
Category 2 NGT plants: all other NGT plants; rules under GMO legislation would apply (including a risk assessment and authorization before they are placed on the market); they would be labeled as such

The proposal excludes the use of NGTs in organic production.

Recent developments in the EU Proposal

On March 14, 2025, the Committee of the Permanent Representatives of the Governments of the Member States to the European Union (Coreper) endorsed the Council's negotiating mandate on regulating NGT plants.

The Council supports the main elements of the EU Proposal but suggests several changes in its negotiating mandate, taking into account environmental and health objectives, as well as concerns regarding patenting. The main changes agreed by the Council include the following:

Cultivation and presence of NGT plants: Member states can opt out and decide to prohibit the cultivation of category 2 NGT plants on their territory, take measures to avoid the unintended presence of category 2 NGT plants in other products, and adopt measures to avoid the unintended presence of category 1 NGT plants in organic farming on their territories.
Category 1 NGT plants and patenting: To ensure transparency, breeders must submit information on all existing or pending patents and for the information to be included in a publicly available database set up by the Commission listing all NGT plants under category 1 status.
Patenting expert group: The Council's mandate provides for creating an expert group on the effect of patents on NGT plants, with experts from all member states and the European Patent Office.
Patenting study: According to the Council's mandate, the Commission is required to publish a study on the impact of patenting on innovation, availability of seeds to farmers, and competitiveness of the EU plant breeding sector one year after the Proposal’s entry into force.
Labeling: To ensure consumers have access to accurate and comprehensive information, category 2 NGT plants must be labeled as such and include all relevant traits.
Traits: The Council negotiating mandate states that herbicide tolerance cannot be one of the traits for category 1 NGT plants.

The new rules would ensure that NGT plants available on the EU market are as safe as conventionally bred varieties. The proposal covers plants that contain small modifications to their genetic material (targeted mutagenesis) or insertions of genetic material from the same plant or crossable plants (cisgenesis, including intragenesis). GMOs are still regulated by EU legislation on GMOs.

The agreement on the Council's negotiating mandate allows its presidency to start negotiations with the European Parliament about the final text of the regulation. The outcome needs to be formally adopted by the Council and the Parliament before the regulation can enter into force.

Support for the Coreper outcome

Since the EU Proposal was launched in 2023, professional organizations, academic groups, scientists, and like-minded individuals have welcomed it. Similarly, different groups in the EU have welcomed the outcome of the Coreper meeting.

In a press release, the Plants for the Future European Technology Platform, a non-profit membership organization representing academia, industry, and the European farming community, announced that it had celebrated the agreement during the Coreper meeting.

“We applaud this historic milestone in the EU Council and look forward to finally seeing this file move to negotiations in trilogues next month. Meanwhile, we thank the current and previous Presidencies for their respective roles in achieving a qualified majority,” says Amrit Nanda, Executive Manager of Plans for the Future.

The European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO), an independent academic organization, welcomed the EU Council decision to move forward and start negotiations for the EU Proposal. Karin Metzlaff, EPSO Executive Director, affirms that “Improving the NGT regulation by broadening the original 20 x 20 base pair modification proposal by the European Commission in 2023 is both possible - taking into account recent research and publications – and necessary to address disease resistance, climate change, nutritional quality for future proof diverse crop varieties and thereby better contribute to the EU Green Deal.”

Euroseeds, representing the interests of those in research, breeding, production, and marketing of seeds in the EU, welcomed the outcome of the Coreper meeting and called it an important step for the future of European plant breeding innovation.

“Reaching a balanced Council position on NGTs is a significant step forward. It is now essential that the Co-legislators ensure a regulatory framework that is innovation-friendly and workable for all companies in the seed and agri-food sector,” said Garlich von Essen, Secretary General of Euroseeds.

For more details, read the Coreper press release and the statements of support from Plants for the Future, EPSO, and Euroseeds.

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