Two paths of risk regulation: the concurrence of scientific and sociocultural decision-making in the European law of agricultural genetic engineering

Future hazards which may result from genetically engineered plants can currently only be anticipated. Therefore, the handling of the potential risks is becoming a crucial political and legal question. The following article describes the differing national regulatory approaches in Europe: an economic, a scientific, and a sociopolitical approach pre-existed the European Union’s deliberate release Directive, which itself follows a primarily science-based approach. The latter is based on objective technological assessments of individual cases. At the same time, however, the Directive contains elements of a sociocultural approach, which is open to value-based judgments and thus, necessarily takes a subjective, general assessment of the use of genetically modified organisms. As a result, the European law of Agricultural Genetic Engineering provides two paths of risk regulation in parallel.