The EU Commission announced yesterday their intention to abandon the proposed new seed law regulation. This means short of a specific request from the EU Parliament for a return of the proposal, it’s unlikely to resurface. This leaves some uncertainty, but it seems likely the proposed regulation is now dead. Here is the announcement and Annex II, the so-called ‘kill list’.
The EU Commission probably now has to come up with another proposal. For the time being, it leaves the existing EU seed law directives unchanged. Since there is pressure for returning decision making to national governments, and reducing administrative burden, there is hope that a new proposal will go much further towards a straightforward repeal of existing seed laws rather than just a simple rebranding and otherwise strengthening of industry control.
Parliament
The EU Commission informally consulted the Parliament before this decision was taken. The answer back was very unclear, and did not indicate a clear preference one way or another. Some independent and informal polling of MEPs suggests quite a lot of disagreement between the different factions. The chances are it will be more of a fight to stop the proposal the next time around, and the situation will be more complicated.
