On July 25, 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), sitting in a Grand Chamber, rendered its highly controversial judgment in the case C-528/16, Confédération paysanne and Others. In light of the CJEU’s reasoning, genome-edited organisms are, without exemption, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) within the meaning of Directive 2001/18/EC and, therefore, ultimately, governed by the EU’s entire regulatory framework for GMOs. The fundamental source for an in-depth understanding of the Court’s reasoning is not the Advocate General’s opinion, which the Court blatantly dismissed, but the preliminary reference by the French Conseil d’État. In particular, the CJEU adopted the Conseil d‘État’s assumptions of risks arising allegedly from genome editing techniques, which, in turn, prompted the Court to apply the precautionary principle. The Court is to be criticized, inter alia, for not having impugned and scrutinized the alleged risks and for having applied the precautionary principle in disregard of its own case-law. Eventually, it is, by now, the Union legislator’s task to decide on whether genome-edited organisms should be governed or, rather, exempted, at least in part, from the EU’s legal framework on GMOs in order to avoid transatlantic trade conflicts and to ensure the competitivenes especially of small and medium-sized plant and animal breeders in Europe.
