The right to ban genetically modified organisms’ crops in the EU

Randour, François [UCL] Janssens, Cédric [ULB] Delreux, Tom [UCL]

In 2001, the European Union adopted a directive on the cultivation of GMOs (directive 2001/18/EC). Today, resistance of national and regional authorities on the implementation of this directive can be observed. Indeed, several member states have prohibited the cultivation of GMOs and regions organized themselves in a growing GMO-Free Regions Network, despite the legal uncertainty of the GMOs’ ban they enacted. The gap between the existing EU legislation and the positions of some member states and regions came to a head in March 2009 when the Council rejected the European Commission’s proposal requesting a couple of member states to repeal national measures banning the cultivation of GMOs. The Commission reacted to this deadlock situation by proposing in 2010 a new regulation granting the “possibility for the Member States to restrict or prohibit the cultivation of GMOs in their territory” (COM (2010) 375 final). This paper will analyze how the center of decision regarding the right to ban the cultivation of GMOs moved from the European Union back to the Member States, making explicitly use of the ‘subsidiarity principle’ argument. Using a multi-level governance perspective, the dynamics and the relations between different levels of governance (regional, national and European) will be analyzed, as well as their effect on the position of the Commission and its relation with the member states in the 2010 legislative process. It relies on an extensive literature review, on a review of official documents and on semi-structured interviews with key actors of the European institutions and stakeholders.