The EU is mov­ing towards weak­er rules for genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied microor­gan­isms (GMMs) delib­er­ate­ly released into the envi­ron­ment. The Com­mis­sion says EU GMO reg­u­la­tions are block­ing access to prod­ucts avail­able else­where. But the glob­al mar­ket for envi­ron­men­tal GMMs is tiny, their ben­e­fits remain uncer­tain, and sci­en­tists warn that envi­ron­men­tal releas­es could pose risks that are dif­fi­cult to pre­dict, con­trol or reverse.

The suc­cess­ful cre­ation of func­tion­al new-to-nature virus­es designed by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has prompt­ed renewed calls for stronger over­sight of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and AI-enabled genome design. In the EU, mean­while, dis­cus­sions are focussed on pre­vent­ing the mali­cious mis­use of biotech­nol­o­gy, while pay­ing lit­tle atten­tion to the biosafe­ty ques­tions raised by increas­ing­ly capa­ble AI genome design tools.

Nation­al GMO coex­is­tence rules still apply to all genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) plants, includ­ing those dereg­u­lat­ed under new EU laws, a new legal opin­ion shows. This is because the EU has nev­er exhaus­tive­ly reg­u­lat­ed these areas, also not in its lat­est Reg­u­la­tion (EU) 2006/1388 on plants derived from “new genom­ic tech­niques” (NGT). The Ger­man fed­er­al min­istry of agri­cul­ture dis­putes this find­ing,…