Europe’s summer of drought has been impossible to ignore. Rivers dried up, exposing the skeletons of warships and ancient buildings. Images captured by satellite show swathes of the continent’s normally verdant fields turned to parched dust bowls.
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In response, some European politicians are starting to rethink the European Union’s long-standing opposition to genetically modified (GMO) and gene-edited crops. In July, an Italian member of the European Parliament called for a loosening of the rules that restrict crop varieties created using new gene-editing techniques like CRISPR from being grown and sold within the EU. “New agricultural biotechnology can provide experimentation for more drought- and pest-resistant plants,” member Antonio Tajani said in a meeting at the European Parliament. Other Italian politicians have joined him in calling for similar changes to gene-editing regulations.
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The European Commission is responsible for creating new legislation in the EU, and in April 2021 published a study outlining its desire to loosen regulations on gene-edited crops. “The commission realized that the European Court of Justice decision was not science-based. It was legally based but it wasn’t science-based,” says Cathie Martin, a professor of plant science at the John Innes Centre in the UK. The European Commission’s study concluded that the EU’s existing GMO rules aren’t suitable for regulating crops made using gene editing.
