Europe has just done something it hasn’t done in a very long time: today it chose innovation.
After years of debate, the European Parliament today voted to adopt the New Genomic Techniques (NGT) regulation, concluding the European legislative process for NGTs. This is the first genuinely pro-innovation piece of legislation this sector has seen, and it deserves to be recognised as such. It is a step change for plant breeding in Europe, and for the farmers, scientists and plant breeders who have spent years making the case for it.
The adoption of the NGT regulation marks the end of a long conversation in Europe about the future of plant breeding technologies. More importantly, it marks the beginning of a new one: about what kind of agricultural system Europe wants to build, and whether it has the confidence to see it through.
Why this matters
We are not operating in a stable world. Climate volatility is intensifying. Extreme weather events are becoming part of the seasonal calendar for farmers from Finland to Portugal. Southern Europe faces deepening water scarcity. Emerging plant pests and diseases are advancing northwards. And through all of this, farmers are being asked to produce more food, use less water, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, protect biodiversity, and improve soil health – simultaneously.
This new framework unlocks precision breeding techniques that can deliver direct, on-farm benefits: varieties that are more resilient, better adapted to local conditions, and able to maintain yield and quality under the climate pressures farmers are already facing. In practice, this can mean more reliable harvests, helping farmers reduce risk and stabilise income. It has the potential to put genuinely useful traits in the hands of European farmers within the next two to four years. That matters enormously. This is not just about technology – it is about food security, a competitive agri-food sector, and demonstrating that Europe can tackle its environmental ambitions without dismantling the farming system that sustains the continent and beyond.
The harder question
The NGT vote is a milestone. But it does not resolve Europe’s wider innovation challenge.
For too long, European debates have treated sustainability and productivity as competing objectives. In reality, they must go hand in hand. The most sustainable agriculture is not necessarily the one that uses the fewest technologies. It is the one that produces the food society needs while placing the smallest burden on land, water and the natural world. A field that produces less wheat is not automatically more environmentally friendly. If demand remains unchanged, lower productivity requires more land to grow wheat somewhere else. Forests, grasslands and wetlands come under greater pressure. Environmental burdens are not eliminated – they are exported.
The real question is whether Europe can reconcile its environmental ambitions with the reality that sustainable agriculture will require more innovation, not less. That question remains very much open.
Where Europe must go further
Biological solutions – such as microbials, biochemicals and plant extracts – are advancing rapidly and represent a significant part of the answer for farmers who have already seen a net loss of 89 crop protection solutions from their toolbox in recent years1. Without a dedicated legislative framework in Europe, these tools will never deliver the long-term impact they are capable of.
The ongoing negotiations on the Food and Feed Safety Omnibus offer an opportunity to fix this. The Commission has proposed a clear and workable definition for biocontrols, alongside targeted provisions to speed up their path to market, giving farmers faster access to solutions they already rely on as part of their integrated pest management.
What is concerning is that in the Council, simplification for biocontrols is being confined to so-called “low-risk” substances – a small niche that does not give farmers effective tools to tackle pests, weeds and disease at scale. This would leave intact many of the bottlenecks the Omnibus is meant to address. We need Member States to think bigger.
Then there is the question of investment. Innovation requires sustained R&D commitment, and that commitment depends on a predictable return. The average cost of bringing a new crop protection product to market has reached €276 million2. Regulatory data protection is what makes that investment viable – yet proposed reforms to introduce an EU-wide data protection clock risk undermining it in a structural way.
Because product authorisations happen at different speeds across Member States, a single clock starting from the first national authorisation would mean protection has already partially or fully expired by the time a product reaches slower markets. The result could be the precise opposite of what the Commission intends: companies becoming more selective about where they seek authorisations, leaving farmers – particularly in smaller markets – with fewer innovative solutions. Every erosion of that protection makes it harder to justify the R&D spend that brings new solutions to market. Less protection means less investment, which means fewer products when farmers need them most.
Robot identifies plants by 'touching' their leaves
The choice in front of Europe
Europe has shown with the NGT regulation that it can act when the evidence is clear and the will is there. The question now is whether it will apply that same confidence and resolve to biocontrols and to the data protection reforms that determine whether the next wave of innovation ever reaches the field.
The milestone is set. The momentum is Europe’s to build.
