Over the last decade, several concerns arose regarding the transparency of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). In particular, controversies related to the re-approval of glyphosate in 2016 and the revelation of the ‘Monsanto papers’ in 2017 increased the public attention on the relationship between industry and regulatory agencies like EFSA. As a reaction, the EU legislator enacted Regulation (EU) 2019/1381 (the so-called Transparency Regulation) which aims to improve the transparency and sustainability of EU risk assessment in the food chain. This Regulation amends the General Food Law Regulation and applies as of March 2021. The Transparency Regulation enshrines new rules concerning access to documents which strengthen the transparency of, inter alia, agendas, participant lists and minutes of the Management Board, the Advisory Forum, the Scientific Committee and the Scientific Panels and their working groups. The Regulation also aims at enhancing confidentiality and risk communication in line with a new ‘proactive approach’ to transparency. Taking stock of the way in which EFSA has implemented it, the paper will analyse EFSA’s transparency policy and its most recent measures adopted to enhance transparency in line with this reform. Based on these findings, it will identify potential needs, if any, for revision of rules and policies on the transparency of EFSA and make recommendations for their improvement.

With its 2023 Proposal on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) and their application to agriculture, the Commission is changing yet again its regulatory approach towards modern agricultural biotechnology. The Proposal puts a doubt in the precautionary approach of the EU towards biotechnology adopted since the 1990s with emphasis on precaution and other legitimate factors, i.e. non-scientific factors, within risk management as exemplified by the regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or novel foods. In contrast, the Proposal places an emphasis on risk assessment and the safety of NGT plants and their products.

With this Proposal, the Commission wants to update its GMO legislation to reflect the scientific innovations and technologies in biotechnology over the biggest part of the last quarter of century and ease their development and placing on the market. It carves out a rather extensive section of NGTs from its GMO legislation. It considers that if a NGT plant or food is ‘as safe as’ conventional plant or food then it will not require premarket authorisation. This strikingly departs from the premarket authorisation of biotechnology, for example GMO and novel foods.

The paper argues that the latest proposal centres the risk assessment/risk management dichotomy in the food governance domain at the heart of the regulation of agricultural biotechnology is becoming increasingly challenging. The fact that other legitimate or non-scientific factors are not assessed in the risk assessment phase directly impacts on the approach towards such technology. This proposed regulatory change is also problematically accompanied by a shift away from the consideration of the interests of Member States towards a recentralisation of powers towards the EFSA and the Commission with focus on scientific innovation, building the economy and single market. Interestingly, both Member States and the biotech industry have criticised the Proposal with what seems little prospect of going ahead as it stands.

Novel Genomic Techniques (NGTs) allow an unprecedented blurring of the nature-culture dichotomy. At the same time, they pose a variety of challenges to the European Union's evidence-based system of risk regulation, as highlighted by current legislative activities favoring a results-based, instead of technology-based, approach to regulating NGTs. How such approach (potentially) affects the regulatory system of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), Food and Feed, its core legal principles and aims, is subject of this contribution. Point of departure forms an analysis of key parameters of the Union’s system of risk regulation. By its risk-based approach, Union law has developed a regulatory model for managing the regulation of risks heavily relying on techno-scientific knowledge. Being necessarily orientated towards operationalizing uncertainty, techno-scientific risk knowledge itself is of fluid nature. As the legal catalyst for uncertainties to be translated into decision-making capacities, the precautionary principle, in a supposedly paradoxical way, perpetuates the evidence-based imperative even under conditions of uncertainty by means of procedural duties of knowledge generation, whilst extending discretion in favor of tutioristic measures. The ‘search for the unknown’ and proceduralisation qua reversibility as key parameters of the precautionary principle are pressured where techno-scientific innovations such as NGTs are subjected to results-based legislative frameworks at the expense of procedural duties facilitating knowledge gathering and processing. Ultimately, the question of the regulation of NGTs thus leads back to fundamental discussions of risk regulation, to wit: the legal construction of risks between leveraging biotechnological innovation and assuring social acceptance of regulatory subject and regulator.

Science for the Citizens or Science by the Citizens? – The Role of Citizen Science in Light of the Dieselgate and Glyphosate Saga

The need for solid science has never been greater than in the current era of constant economic, environmental, and societal challenges. The technocratic decision-making of the EU, just like the related epistemic and democratic worries about these processes, increased debates on subjective and politicised science. Several scandals shed light on the eroding capacity and legitimacy of the Single Market’s scientific decision-making, especially the recent scandal of Dieselgate and the still ongoing glyphosate saga. Both scandals related to the citizen-collected evidence of diesel engine air pollution, just like the harmful nature of glyphosate as an active substance. The new rise of citizen science can be seen in NGOs' and public participation's identification of these market deficiencies. Additionally, due to their ambiguous nature, the post-crisis policy steps also led to the further intensification of citizen science. Even if the two related policy areas of the EU’s food sector and transportation are relatively diverse, they are also characterised by similar concerns of scientific decision-making, which analysis should be extended to the changing role of citizen science.

The purpose of this paper/research is twofold: (i) to describe the pre-crisis and post-crisis involvement of citizen science with the comparison of these two relatively diverse policy areas of the EU’s food sector and transportation; (ii) to explore the sector-specific elements of the citizen science, while potentially identifying some cross-sectoral lessons to be learned.

The new rise of citizen science cannot and should not be seen as the mere expression of public mistrust towards national or even EU-level institutional efforts, as it could also lead to further policy innovations. These alternative sources of scientific decision-making might facilitate regaining the public trust in certain areas, could complement the public actors' efforts in analysing the ever-changing environment and identify potential threats to market access processes. The well-targeted cross-sectoral analysis of citizen science could substantially contribute to adaptation schemes and techniques to be applied in the EU’s other policy areas.

A recent investigation revealed that the EU is exporting more than 10,000 tonnes of ‘bee killing’ neonicotinoid pesticides a year to Global South countries, despite having banned the use of these chemicals in its own fields to protect pollinators and human health. This is because loopholes in EU law allow companies to continue producing pesticides for export long after they have been prohibited from domestic use to protect human health or the environment. As the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights emphasised, exporting banned and hazardous pesticides poses a direct assault on the human rights of the most vulnerable. Further, it creates a boomerang effect as the EU exports pesticides banned on its territory to countries it imports food from. In doing so, foods on the EU market have residues of banned pesticides on them. At the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the European Parliament called on the EU and the Parties to make strong commitments towards sustainable food systems, including requirements and strategies for a reduction in the use of pesticides. And yet, EU’s trade in agricultural pesticides is escalating. This paper aims to evaluate risk assessment and risk management of the EU policy on the regulation of agricultural pesticides and to discuss whether the EU should ban exports of pesticides considered unsafe on its market and, at the same time, take a leading role in proposing an international framework in the form of a global legally binding agreement.