Before legislative procedures, the EU regularly asks for the opinions of its citizens and stakeholders. In principle, anyone can participate in these consultations, including non-European citizens. A consultation on new plant breeding technologies [ended] October 22, 2021. The Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) group in the European Parliament, as well as some anti-GMO NGOs, have hijacked this consultation by introducing thousands of pre-formulated comments.
As of [October 24], more than 65,000 comments [in the end: 70,894] have been submitted on the topic “Legislation applicable to plants produced using certain new genomic techniques,” of which 44% came from Germany. By comparison, the consultation on “Protection of the marine environment – review of EU rules,” ended on 21 October 2021 and received 120 comments, 15% of which are from Germany according to official statistics. How is it possible?
The Verts / ALE group and other organizations, including the Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft, the Aurelia Foundation, the Gen-ethische Informationsdienst, Demeter, IFOAM, Save our Seeds, GM Watch, the association Umweltinstitut München eV and Slowfood, use the Proca APP application, a campaign tool that makes it easy to generate ready-to-use text modules and collect data.
[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in French and has been translated and edited for clarity.]
