First phase of the opt-out process completed

As a reminder, Directive (EU) 2015/412 amending the Deliberate Release Directive was published in March 2015 (see AGCT-Gentechnik.report 03/2015 ).
The amending Directive provides that individual Member States that do not wish to allow the cultivation of GMOs in their country or in specific locations in their country have the possibility to request the Commission, within 60 days of the forwarding of the assessment report, to exclude all or part of their territory from cultivation. First phase (Article 26b(1) of 2001/18/EC). If a request is submitted, the Commission adjusts the geographical scope (Article 26b(1) of 2001/18/EC). In this so-called first phase, a total of 19 EU Member States requested a cultivation restriction for their territory. The European Commission complied with these requests, meaning that the deadline for the affected companies to lodge an objection with the European Commission expired at the beginning of November. The seed and crop protection companies Monsanto, Pioneer Hi-Bred, Dow AgroScience, and Syngenta accepted the cultivation restriction by waiving their right to object to the European Commission. For the genetically modified organisms already approved or pending approval, which are exclusively maize lines, this means that the companies themselves have voluntarily renounced the cultivation of these organisms in the 19 EU Member States. The second phase , during which a Member State may, in the event of an objection to the area restrictions, adopt measures to restrict or prohibit the cultivation of GMOs after authorisation in all or part of its territory, is therefore no longer necessary for this GMO.

Against this background, it is not surprising that the amendment to the GenTG, which must lay the foundations for the second phase, has still not been passed by Parliament.

This publication can also be found on the website of the law firm Dr. Kauch .