In what it has dubbed as a “mid-term review,” the European Commission (EC) is attempting to push through a major reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The CAP, you may recall, is the farm support legislation that has enabled Europe to move beyond self-sufficiency to overproduction in agricultural produce. Subsidies to farmers under CAP, often for products that Europe already produces in vast excess, account for over half of the entire European Union (EU) budget. The main thrust of CAP reform is that subsidies will shift away from being productivity bonuses and toward being incentives for producing “quality” products in an environmentally sustainable manner.

This might not matter for biotechnology, except that there is a distinct likelihood that biotech legislation could become horribly entangled in CAP reform (as happened at the end of the 1980s when European “envirocrats” encumbered biotechnology with the draconian directive 90/220 covering GMO release). As CAP reform is being debated at the same time as GM regulations, it is highly likely that concessions made by one nation in negotiations on the former will be used to bargain concessions from another in the latter.

Until now, the introduction of GM products has in effect been blocked by a cabal of five nations—Greece, Luxembourg, France, Italy, and Denmark—whose environment ministers decided they didn't like the existing rules for GM product approval. Of those nations, France and Greece also oppose the CAP reform, primarily because their farmers reap disproportionate benefits from the current subsidy system. On the other hand, Spain and Portugal, agricultural nations that also oppose the current proposals for CAP reform, have not thus far opposed the progress of biotech crops. For the relaxation of rules on biotechnology products (see p. 758) to come into force, a “qualified majority” of environment ministers (voting weighted by the size of a country) needs to approve it. A tactical switch of allegiance by Spain or Portugal to a more anti-biotech stance could thus seriously threaten this process.

There is an alternative. Biotechnology could become synergistically integrated into the thinking that surrounds the new CAP. The reality, of course, is that GM crops contribute directly to the environmental sustainability apparently now desired by EU politicians. The EC's mid-term review of the CAP ought to be a golden opportunity for agbiotech companies to make that point forcefully. Over the next few months, industry groups have the chance to press forward with what is already an exceptionally strong case in a political atmosphere that should be encouraging. If they fail to do so, then they will have failed not only the companies they represent, but all those Europeans who want to usher in an era of more sustainable agricultural practice.