Trilogue agreement on GMOs-NGTs: A betrayal of farmers’ legitimate concerns on patents, health, the environment, and consumers’ rights to information

Defending Peasants’ Rights hereby republishes the press release issued by the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) on 04 December 2025.

Yesterday evening, representatives from the three European institutions came to an agreement on the trilogue on the proposal to deregulate plant GMOs obtained by new genomic techniques (GMOs-NGTs). The European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC), representing the voice of small-scale farmers in Europe, denounces a deal which completely ignores the concerns of farmers, especially on patents. The European Parliament had initially recognized in its position of February 2024 that patents were problematic, even calling for a limitation of the scope of patents to prevent its extension to traditional and peasant seeds. Yet, the Parliament’s negotiator, Mrs Polfjärd, has not taken it into account.

These important demands were completely suppressed during the trilogue, leaving in the final deal only optional measures, such as a non-binding code of conduct for licensing and voluntary transparency, leaving farmers, small seed companies, manufacturers and retailers without any means of protection against accidental contaminations. The trilogue agreement claims that patentable plants obtained by NGTs are equivalent to plants produced by traditional, non-patentable breeding methods. Removing the current requirement to publish the detection and identification methods of GMOs traits will allow the extension of the scope of NGT patents to seeds and agricultural products that naturally contain these same traits. These measures are useless to protect farmers and other agri-food operators from the risks related to patents, notably abusive pursuits for patent infringement. Such pursuits will inevitably happen if all traceability requirements are removed, and will lead to the privatisation of all cultivated plants by the patent model, including traditional and peasant seeds.

The agreement foresees to deregulate patented GMOs-NGTs without traceability, including without the mandatory of detection and identification methods[1], without mandatory coexistence measures, without labelling for final products and without the possibility for Member States to opt-out. This proposal does nothing to prevent contamination for the organic sector, although it is strictly prohibited by the organic regulation and rejected by consumers. Some requirements of the current GMO legislation will continue to apply to GMOs-NGTs “category 2”, but we already know that the vast majority of NGTs will fall in “category 1”, which will be completely deregulated. In short, this deal would completely remove the right of farmers and consumers to continue to grow and eat GMO-free, and will endanger the economic survival of the well-established GMO-free and organic agri-food sectors in Europe.

“This deal will only benefit to large patent-holding multinationals, such as Corteva, BASF or Bayer, which will be able to control all seeds and the whole food chain with their patents. For all the others, farmers, small and medium breeders and consumers, it will be a loss. The main motivation behind this deregulation is to impose the patent model in Europe, and to impose GMOs to those who do not want them,” said Alessandra Turco from ECVC’s Coordinating Committee. “Patents are a tool to lock in access to genetic resources with the aim restructure the seed market at the advantage of large firms. If this deal comes through, it will lead to a monopolistic concentration of the market, the disappearance of smaller seed companies, a widespread privatisation of genetic resources and irreversible reduction in agrobiodiversity, as well as an increase in the price of seeds.”

Fortunately, this is not over yet: this harmful trilogue deal is only the result of the negotiations between the Presidency of the Council and the negotiators from the Parliament and Commission. Now, it still needs to be approved by all Members of European Parliament (MEPs) and all Member States. ECVC calls on all MEPs and Member States to hear farmers’, agri-food chain operators’ and consumers’ legitimate concerns and to not approve this dangerous text.

ECVC speaks on behalf of the many European farmers who do not want and do not need to use patented GMOs-NGTs, and which are already adapting their crops to climatic changes and reducing chemical input with peasant breeding and the use of locally-adapted crops, without depending on expensive patented GMOs. ECVC therefore demands to all MEPs to upheld its strong commitment against patents and to not endorse a proposal that will seriously undermine Europe’s food sovereignty and farmers’ rights.

[1] Which would be absolutely necessary for post-marketing monitoring, to allow the removal of a GMO-NGT from the market in case of damages to health and to the environment.