# New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) in Europe: a changing era for plant breeding > The approval of the New Genomic Techniques Regulation opens the door to more innovative, sustainable and competitive European agriculture after decades of regulatory stalemate --- Consulta la previsión del tiempo en tu localización exactaSuscríbete a nuestra Newsletter semanal [Home](https://www.plataformatierra.es/)/[Actualidad](https://www.plataformatierra.es/actualidad) 29 June 2026 12 min # New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) in Europe: a changing era for plant breeding The approval of the New Genomic Techniques Regulation opens the door to more innovative, sustainable and competitive European agriculture after decades of regulatory stalemate Biotecnología Producción Vegetal ![Manos vertiendo granos de trigo en un saco con un campo al fondo.](https://static.plataformatierra.es/strapi-uploads/assets/web_NGT_Europa_junio_2026_e9fe683eb3.jpg) Guardar Compartir --- The European Parliament's final vote on the [**Regulation on New Genomic Techniques (NGT)**](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/es/press-room/20260611IPR45215/nuevas-tecnicas-genomicas-para-impulsar-la-innovacion-en-agricultura-sostenible), preceded in recent weeks by political uncertainties, took place on 17 June 2026. Following the plenary's endorsement of the Regulation, it was published on [**26 June 2026**](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2026/1388/oj) in the Official Journal of the European Union. In my view, the new European regulation on [new genomic techniques (NGT)](https://www.efsa.europa.eu/es/topics/new-genomic-techniques) represents the most significant regulatory shift for European agricultural biotechnology since the 1990s. ## **A historic moment** For two decades, the European framework for Genetically Modified Organisms maintained a near-complete blockade on the adoption of many innovations in plant improvement, while other major producers—the United States, China—advanced with new genomic editing technologies. New genomic techniques, defined in the work of the Commission and the JRC as the set of genome modification techniques developed after 2001, have enabled the shift **from classical transgenesis to precision editing tools**, with changes indistinguishable from those that conventional improvement could generate. This regulation creates, for the first time, **a specific regulatory pathway for plants obtained with NGT**, separating them from the 'classical' GMO framework and recognising that many of these plants present risk profiles comparable to those of varieties obtained through traditional methods. In historical terms, it means correcting a gap between science and law that has been dragging down European agricultural innovation for years, and opens the door to varieties more resistant to drought, pests and diseases, as well as crops with improved nutritional profiles, developed in many cases by European companies. > This turn corrects a gap between science and law that has been holding back European agricultural innovation for years This shift comes in a context of climate change, price volatility and geopolitical tensions that have returned food security to the centre of the agenda, **where the capacity to innovate in seeds is a key factor for resilience**. If we know how to take advantage of it, this regulation can help European agriculture reduce inputs, improve its environmental footprint and maintain its competitiveness against competitors who are already using these technologies at scale. ## **What the regulation says: NGT 1 and NGT 2** The core of the new framework is the creation of two categories of NGT plants, with very different requirements between them. - **NGT Category 1 (NGT 1):** These are plants whose modifications could have been obtained through conventional improvement or traditional mutagenesis—that is, genome changes no greater than what we already accept in classical improvement. For these plants, a verification procedure is established, but once they meet the criteria, they are subject to the same regime as conventional varieties, being exempt from most GMO legislation requirements. Some political balance adjustments were inevitably negotiated, such as the exclusion of herbicide-tolerant plants and those designed to produce insecticidal substances from NGT 1 category, in order to limit this category to traits considered to have lower regulatory sensitivity. - **NGT Category 2 (NGT 2):** These are plants incorporating more complex modifications that do not fit within the equivalence to conventional improvement. For these, the GMO framework logic is maintained: risk assessment, prior authorisation, traceability and mandatory GMO labelling, although with adjustments to better reflect their risk profiles. The practical key lies in the fact that **NGT 1s**, once verified, **will be treated as conventional varieties in terms of risk assessment, market circulation and food and feed labelling requirements**. This means that the consumer will see products in the supermarket equivalent to current ones, without additional labels, while information is channelled through a public register of NGT 1 varieties and mandatory labelling at the level of seeds and reproductive materials, ensuring transparency for farmers, breeders and organic operators. > The regulation does, however, preserve the prohibition on using NGT in organic production, in line with this sector's historical position In the final compromise on patents, the option has been taken to maintain the possibility of patenting plants obtained through NGT, but introducing transparency and monitoring safeguards. Developers seeking NGT 1 status will be obliged to declare all existing or pending patents linked to them, information that the European Commission will incorporate and keep updated in a public database. The Commission must draw up an EU code of conduct on licensing and publish a study on the effect of patents on innovation, seed availability and the position of breeders and farmers, with the aim of guiding future legislative decisions if access problems or excessive concentration are detected. ## **A very long political and technical road** Getting to this point has been an extraordinarily lengthy process, formally beginning with the Council's request to the Commission in 2019 for a study on the status of new genomic techniques in EU law. Based on this request, the Commission prepared a far-reaching study, supported by scientific and market work, which concluded that the current framework was not adequate for a number of NGTs, and that regulatory adaptation was necessary. The legislative proposal was finally presented in 2023, following multiple consultations with Member States, scientific agencies, sector actors and civil society. In 2024 and 2025, examination by the Council and Parliament followed in succession, with intense discussions in the Council of Agriculture Ministers and in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), which was responsible for the dossier in Parliament. **The turning point came with the provisional political agreement between Council and Parliament at the end of 2025**, following a complex trilogue that crystallised in the two-category scheme, the 'conventional treatment' of NGT 1s and a series of guarantees on transparency, seeds and organic production. In 2026, the Council adopted its position on first reading and Parliament moved towards the definitive vote in plenary, following a start to the year marked by attempts to reopen the text with amendments on patents, labelling and moratoria, which delayed the final vote by a few weeks. ![](https://static.plataformatierra.es/strapi-uploads/assets/web_laboratorio_NGT_217a027c25.jpg) Europa da luz verde a las nuevas técnicas genómicas (NGTs) para transformar la agricultura  [Leer el artículo](https://www.plataformatierra.es/actualidad/europa-luz-verde-nuevas-tecnicas-genomicas-ngt-transformar-agricultura) There have been years of reports, consultations, opinions and debates where very different views have been confronted **on the role of biotechnology in Europe's green transition**. That is why the fact that the regulation finally reaches the finish line and is approved with a sufficient majority is something that, as someone who has been inside the process, I experience with a mixture of relief and responsibility. ## **The role of the JRC** On this path, [**the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC)**](https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/index_en?prefLang=es) has played **a bridging role between science and policy**. From the start of the debate, the JRC produced exhaustive studies on the technological landscape and current and potential commercial applications of NGTs, showing both their rapid global expansion and the real risk that Europe would be relegated to importing innovations developed on other continents. It was in this context that my team's work was situated, then made up of **Kevin Schneider**, **Jesús Barreiro** and **Berta Sánchez**, focused on analysing the potential of these technologies to make European agriculture more sustainable and competitive, with adoption scenarios, impacts on yields, input use and environmental footprint, and effects on agri-food chains. Our goal was always to provide policymakers with a solid, transparent and methodologically rigorous empirical basis for what NGTs could contribute. The reports and databases we produced have served as a reference in the Commission's study, in impact documents and in technical notes used in interinstitutional negotiations, and have been cited by both supporters and critics of the regulation, which, for a scientist, is perhaps the best indicator that the work has been balanced and useful. > Our goal was always to provide policymakers with a solid, transparent and methodologically rigorous empirical basis for NGTs ## **The architects: the biotechnology unit of DG SANTE at the European Commission** Drawing up and defending the Commission's proposal has been the responsibility of the biotechnology unit of the [**Directorate General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE)**](https://commission.europa.eu/about/departments-and-executive-agencies/health-and-food-safety_en) in Brussels, led by **Irene Sacristán**. Her team has been the technical and regulatory engine that has sustained the case day by day. From the preparation of the initial study to the final trilogue negotiations, the DG SANTE team has had **to weave together science, law and politics** in particularly sensitive terrain, always keeping the focus on health protection. Under Irene Sacristán's leadership, the unit has been able **to defend an evidence-based approach**, differentiated according to the risk profile of the different categories, and open to adapting procedures as experience advances and more data becomes available. It is not an exaggeration to say that, without this tenacious and often little-visible work, the regulation we celebrate today would either be much more restrictive and little operational, or would never have seen the light of day. At a time when misinformation and polarisation make any debate on biotechnology difficult, having solid technical teams within the European administration is an asset we should value more. ![](https://static.plataformatierra.es/strapi-uploads/assets/web_soja_laboratorio_ngt_7c3230a16a.jpg) Cultivos más adaptados a la sequía gracias a las tecnologías NGT [Leer el artículo](https://www.plataformatierra.es/innovacion/cultivos-mas-adaptados-sequia-gracias-tecnologias-ngt-julio-2024) ## **The other architects: Spain's 2023 Presidency and political impetus** From a political perspective, Spain's Presidency of the Council in 2023 played a decisive role in preventing the Regulation proposal from becoming bogged down in endless debates. Under that presidency, the Council of Agriculture Ministers made important progress in discussion of the text, better structuring points of agreement and disagreement and bringing positions closer together between traditionally more reluctant States and others more favourable to biotechnological innovation. The team from the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, including **José Antonio Sobrino**, **Ana Judith Martín**, and many more officials, demonstrated a combination of technical knowledge, listening capacity and political determination that was essential to maintain the balance between ambition and pragmatism. Thanks to this work, the case arrived at the trilogue with a much more solid consensus base than many of us considered possible just months before, and with a clear mandate to explore the route of an NGT category equivalent to conventional varieties. For those of us who have spent years arguing that Europe needed to modernise its framework to avoid falling behind the scientific frontier, it was very significant to see a Council presidency from a country with a strong agricultural sector assume as a political priority a case that, in other times, would have been avoided for being considered too controversial. **That presidency also helped to place the debate on NGT in the broader context of food security**, strategic autonomy and the transition towards less polluting agriculture. ¡No te pierdas nada! Artículos, cursos, informes, libros... Suscríbete a nuestro newsletter Suscribirse ## **The opponents: resistance to change** It would be convenient to celebrate this regulation as unanimous, but it would not be honest. Throughout this process we have seen firm opposition, in some cases very harsh, from certain Member States, political groups and organisations, which have tried to halt or water down the text at almost every stage. Some of these positions are based on legitimate concerns about the concentration of power in the hands of a few companies, the possible impact on small-scale agriculture models or the need to preserve consumer confidence. Others, however, have consisted of a principled refusal to recognise that precision genomic editing poses different challenges from classical transgenesis, and in a defence of regulatory status quo that, in fact, contributed to displacing innovation outside Europe. ## **The work begins now: secondary legislation and implementation** The approval of the regulation is not the end of the road, but the beginning of perhaps an even more demanding phase. **Once published in the Official Journal, the text will enter into force and be applied after a two-year transitional period**, during which it will be necessary to develop secondary legislation, technical guides and administrative procedures for the system to function in practice. **It will be necessary to precisely define the criteria and procedures for classifying a plant as NGT 1**, including the types of permitted modifications, quantitative and qualitative limits and the evidence that developers must provide. It will also be necessary to establish the architecture of the NGT 1 public register, the labelling standards for seeds and plant material, control protocols and coordination mechanisms between national authorities, EFSA, JRC and the Commission itself. In addition, coexistence with organic agriculture and other systems that decide not to use NGT **will require clear and proportionate schemes that minimise conflicts and provide legal certainty**. And, very importantly, there will be a need to invest in communication and training: explaining to farmers, cooperatives, industry, distributors and consumers what changes, what does not change and how safety will be guaranteed. ## **It is late, but not too late** It is true that Europe is late. While we debated categories, definitions and legal precedents, **other actors have been accumulating experience, patents and commercial varieties**, with investments that now translate into a technological offering much superior to ours. The JRC's own market analysis showed that the United States and China are, today, the main centres for NGT applications close to market, with Europe in a secondary role. But arriving late is not the same as having missed the train. **Europe still has a world-class scientific ecosystem in molecular biology, plant genetics and improvement**, with public and private centres capable of developing cutting-edge varieties if offered a stable and predictable regulatory framework. The new regulation finally offers that minimum regulatory certainty that many research groups and companies have been calling for to decide whether to bet on NGT projects in Europe or elsewhere. > The new regulation offers that minimum regulatory certainty that many research groups and companies have been calling for The European Union can still board this train and become a relevant player in the next generation of seed innovations. It will not be immediate or easy, but today we have something that we previously lacked: a framework that recognises that science has advanced, and that finally allows us to put that advance at the service of a more resilient, sustainable and competitive European agriculture. [License![Licencia Creative Commons Atribución 4.0 Internacional. Se permite la reproducción total o parcial del contenido siempre que se cite la fuente original.](https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Esta obra está bajo una [Licencia Creative Commons Atribución 4.0 Internacional. Se permite la reproducción total o parcial del contenido siempre que se cite la fuente original.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) --- Guardar Compartir --- --- Source: https://www.plataformatierra.es/actualidad/ngt-new-genomic-techniques-europe-historic-agricultural-innovation