Growing Smarter: A fair pathway for sharing agricultural innovation across the EU.

Plant scientists across the EU rally ahead of a vote in the EU Parliament on NGT's, February 2024

The Context

In the shadow of Europe’s green ambitions lies a tension at the heart of agricultural innovation. The European Union is on the cusp of regulatory change with profound consequences for the future of food, science, and sovereignty. On May 6, 2025, trilogue negotiations commenced between the European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission on a draft regulation governing plants developed using New Genomic Techniques (NGTs). The outcome may determine whether Europe becomes a global leader in plant breeding and harnesses these new methods to drive a sustainable and future-proof agriculture or retreats into a regulatory maze that locks out innovation and entrenches outdated debates on agriculture and innovation.

At the centre of this debate is not only the science behind gene-editing technologies like CRISPR, but also the rules that govern who owns innovation. The future of patents, breeders' rights, and the accessibility of plant traits will define whether farmers, researchers, and small seed developers can thrive in the coming decades or whether Europe's agri-food system remains tilted towards incumbents and inefficiencies. We must get this right! Not just for competitiveness or climate goals, but for fairness and food security.

What are the trilogue negotiations about?

The regulation under debate (formally titled the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on plants obtained by certain new genomic techniques and their food and feed) aims to update the EU’s 30-year-old framework on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The Commission's proposal would allow a new class of gene-edited plants produced through targeted mutations without foreign DNA insertion to be regulated similarly to conventionally bred crops, provided they meet certain criteria.

The science is clear. Numerous independent scientific advisory bodies agree that the risks of NGTs are comparable to or even lower than traditional breeding or mutagenesis, which Europe has long permitted without GMO restrictions. In fact, genome editing offers far greater precision than older mutagenesis techniques, which rely on bombarding seeds with radiation or chemicals to induce random changes.

Yet the policy questions are anything but straightforward. As expected, the fiercest debates during the trilogue process are not about science but about labeling, traceability, and above all: intellectual property.

Why intellectual property matters

At the core of the controversy is a difficult balance: how to protect innovation without stifling it. Breeding plants is a slow and costly process. It can take more than a decade and millions of euros to develop a new variety that better withstands disease, needs less chemical inputs or thrives in changing climates, and at the same time satisfies both nutritional and consumer demands. Intellectual property protection is needed to incentivize such work. But how we define that protection is under growing scrutiny, especially when it comes to patents.

In Europe, breeders can protect their new plant varieties through a system of Plant Variety Protection (PVP), which grants exclusive rights to sell propagating material (like seeds or cuttings) for a set number of years. Importantly, PVP includes a “breeder’s exemption”: other breeders can freely use protected varieties to develop new ones. This legal framework has long fostered a thriving ecosystem of incremental, decentralized innovation.

Patents, however, are different. Instead of protecting the whole variety, they can protect specific traits, such as a particular DNA sequence conferring drought tolerance or fungal resistance. Patents often do not include an exemption for further breeding, meaning that a breeder using a patented trait may require a license. That license may not always be granted. This creates fears of monopolisation, especially when large multinational companies hold key patents.

While both systems are legally valid and serve different functions, their coexistence is generating friction in light of NGTs, which make it easier to isolate, design, and patent specific traits.

The patent problem and why a blanket ban won’t work

Critics of seed patents often propose a simple solution: ban them. Yet such a move, while emotionally satisfying to some, is legally and economically untenable. As WTO members, EU states are bound by the TRIPS Agreement, which requires protection for biotechnological inventions. The EU’s own Biotechnology Directive (98/44/EC) explicitly permits patenting of biological material isolated from its natural environment, provided it meets the criteria of novelty, inventiveness, and industrial applicability.

A blanket ban would not only risk violating international obligations; it could also backfire economically. European research institutions, startups, and SMEs rely on intellectual property to raise capital, license innovations, and compete globally. Removing patent incentives could shift investment away from public-good breeding towards more lucrative, closed-source models — or worse, drive innovation offshore.

Still, the concerns are real. If the NGT regulation leads to an explosion of patent-protected traits, and no system is put in place to guarantee access, smaller breeders could be locked out of the innovation pipeline. Worse, public trust in the technology may suffer. Not because of the science, but because of the perceived enclosure of nature and knowledge.

What would a fair system look like?

Fortunately, there is a better way. Instead of choosing between patent bans and free-for-alls, Europe can adopt a middle path: a transparent, accessible licensing system that preserves innovation incentives while upholding the principle of equitable access.

This is already happening. Several industry initiatives are working to make patents more navigable and usable for smaller breeders:

• ILP Vegetable and ACLP (Agricultural Crop Licensing Platform) offer collective licensing mechanisms, allowing users to access bundles of patents under fair and standardized conditions.

• PINTO (Patent Information and Transparency Online), established by Euroseeds, provides a searchable database of patented traits.

These initiatives mirror models from other industries, such as music or software, where collective rights management has long provided balance between creators and users. If expanded and properly regulated, they can ensure that genome-edited traits are available to all qualified breeders — whether public or private, large or small.

The Polish proposal and the risk of policy backfire

One idea floated during the trilogue process is to tie the regulatory status of NGT plants to their patent status. In January 2025, the Polish EU Council Presidency proposed that only non-patented NGT plants should benefit from the streamlined approval process; those with patented traits would be treated like traditional GMOs.

This may sound appealing to some stakeholders. But it’s a recipe for legal chaos and regulatory uncertainty. The patent status of a plant can be unclear for years due to ongoing applications or legal challenges. Linking market access to patent paperwork would bog down the very system the regulation seeks to simplify. Worse, it would signal that Europe distrusts its own IP framework, undermining confidence in the rule of law.

Instead, we should decouple regulatory approval, which is about safety and environmental impact, from IP considerations, which are about economic rights. The goal should be clarity, not conflation.

WePlanet’s position: Pro-Science, Pro-Access

At WePlanet, we believe that new genomic techniques are a vital tool in the fight for climate-resilient, low-input, high-nutrition agriculture. Europe must embrace them. Not in a blind rush, but with thoughtful safeguards and structures that ensure public trust and fairness.

That means three things:

1. Science-based regulation: Plants that could occur naturally or via conventional breeding should not be regulated as GMOs simply because they were produced with precision tools.

2. Equitable innovation:  Plant variety protection, including breeder´s rights, is a favorable IP-system and should be applied wherever possible. Public breeding programmes, small companies, and NGOs must have access to key traits via fair and accessible licensing. Innovation should not be the preserve of a few multinationals.

3. Transparent intellectual property: Patent holders should be required to disclose trait-level patents clearly and participate in licensing platforms with fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. It needs to be made sure that patents are defined as narrow as possible.

We support compromise. We support breeder´s rights and accessible licensing platforms. We support farmers and breeders who are doing the hard work of feeding a growing population while protecting the planet.

Our detailed position with further background information can be found here.

The Path Ahead

Europe has a choice. It can cling to outdated frameworks that stifle innovation and centralize control, or it can modernize its agricultural policy in line with its values of fairness, sustainability, and progress. The trilogue negotiations offer a rare opportunity to reset the terms of engagement between science and society, between innovation and equity.

It’s time to grow smarter. Let’s not waste this moment.