EU’s greenlight on the new gene-editing regulation and its implications for the EU-UK reset

The EU Parliament gave its final approval to the new genomic techniques (NGT) regulation that determines its approach to gene-edited plants on 17th June 2026, concluding the EU legislative process. Consequently, the EU’s regulation on gene-editing and other new genomic technologies will face more relaxed regulatory burdens from 2028, after a two-year implementation period. In parallel, the UK has its own regulatory frameworks. It expects to keep its own regulatory framework from the EU-UK Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement negotiations, as indicated in the SPS Agreement preparation document. This blog examines one of the key divergences in labelling and shows why it matters regardless of how negotiations conclude.

The EU has adopted a two-tiered system that distinguishes plants where changes could equally have arisen through conventional breeding (NGT-1 plants) from those with more extensive or higher-risk modifications (NGT-2 plants). NGT-1 will be treated as conventional products, and NGT-2 will be subject to existing genetically-modified organism (GMO) regulatory procedures, which include risk assessment, traceability, and labelling requirements.

During the negotiation procedures, traceability and labelling requirements generated huge disagreement among EU organisations and the public. Following prolonged negotiations at the trilogue stage, the EU Council and Parliament have agreed to create public registration for NGT-1 plants. The final products for food and feed purposes would not be subject to labelling requirements, whereas seed and other plant reproductive materials remain subject to labelling requirements.

Prior to the EU’s regulatory reform, the UK had already adopted a two-tiered mechanism in the Precision Breeding Act and its secondary legislation for England-only and plants-only. Tier-1 plants are treated as conventional plants without the Food Standards Agency risk assessment. Tier-2 organisms are precision-bred organisms (PBOs) with traits where risks are not fully understood. They are subject to separate regulatory mechanisms, going through more rigorous case-by-case risk assessment and evaluation conducted by the Food Standards Agency. Due to the absence of a product labelling requirement in UK PBO regulations, this may be considered less cumbersome compared to the EU NGT-2 under the GMO regulations. This process is different to the UK’s GMO regulatory mechanism. As briefed in our previous blog, the key difference between the EU and the UK also includes the criteria of categorisation. The EU has set a numerical threshold on the modification for NGT-1, whereas the UK has a more flexible definition of PBOs, defining the organisms that “could have resulted from traditional processes”. The food and feed driven by PBOs do not require labelling and are available on a public register, which offers different information about PBOs compared to that of the EU’s NGT public register.

This gap indicates a divergence beyond a mere legal text.

What are the implications for the UK?

As part of the EU-UK reset, the two sides have been negotiating the SPS Agreement aimed at removing SPS-related barriers to trade since Brexit. Under the principle of “dynamic alignment”, set out in the Common Understanding, the UK will align some EU SPS rules on an ongoing basis but have “a short list of limited exceptions to dynamic alignment”. In a guidance document on genetic technologies, the UK Government states that “…[p]recision breeding is subject to ongoing negotiations between the UK and the EU as part of the SPS agreement. The EU have accepted there will need to be a number of areas where we need to retain our own rules.” It is unclear whether both the EU and the UK will explicitly agree on the carve-out of PBO regulations.

This uncertainty has separately come under legal challenge in England. Beyond GM, an advocacy group for gene-editing transparency, and other stakeholders brought a judicial review against the UK Government, challenging the absence of labelling and traceability requirements for PBOs. Consequently, a High Court ruling found the minister was wrongly advised on his scope of powers on the labelling provisions, and his decision not to seek adequate inquiries on the labelling requirements for PBOs was irrational.

Notably, the Court’s evidence reveals that the UK Government has considered the labelling requirement as subject to the result of EU-UK SPS negotiations, as stated, “the SPS-agreement would have a large impact on this [PBO] policy” at a minister’s meeting with officials in 2024. This demonstrates that the UK Government is looking at the labelling requirement as a bargaining card at the negotiating table with the EU.

The UK-EU Common Understanding's own conditions state that an exception will be agreed only if it does not represent lower standards than the EU's, does not adversely affect the placing of EU-compliant goods on the UK market, and respects the principle that only EU-compliant goods enter the EU.

Set against the High Court's finding that the current regulations impose no labelling requirement once a PBO enters the supply chain, this framework sits uneasily with the “no lower standards” test. This is compounded by England's qualitative definition of PBOs, compared to the EU's quantitative criteria for NGT-1 status. If the PBO does not get an exception, the UK will need to adopt the EU’s verification and registration architecture in its entirety under dynamic alignment. If the UK succeeds in agreeing on an exception, and the UK and the EU maintain divergent approaches in this area, the UK will need to meet EU regulatory requirements for precision-bred exports, complicating the Common Understanding’s goal that the ‘vast majority’ of plant and animal products should be traded without certificates or controls. And if both sides dig in, the issue could threaten progress on the negotiations themselves.