Re-Imagine Europa think tank (RIE) has launched a booklet with tips for navigating polarised conversations on the highly contentious topic of the new rules on plants’ gene editing, which is due to be voted on by the Parliament’s environment committee on 24 January.

“Agriculture is often seen as the apple of discord in Europe,” the chief executive of RIE, Erika Staël von Holstein, said in an interview with Euractiv. 

The polarisation of NGTs relies on the opposed opinions of those considering NGTs a fundamental tool to have more sustainable crops and others fearing unintended impacts of the technology on human health and ecosystems.

The RIE “depolarisation manual” includes a seven-step communication strategy aimed at breaking down distrust between conflicting parties, with key points including the focus on shared goals – such as the preservation of biodiversity and climate change mitigation and adaptation – and the elimination of polarising language and “dehumanising” rhetoric. 

Examples of the latter, the handbook reads, are questions “casting the other as ethically suspect”, such as “Is big-agri paying your salary?”

RIE co-hosted an event with EU-SAGE (European Sustainable Agriculture Through Genome Editing) at the European Parliament on 10 January, where the president of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), Peter Meedendorp, said that plant gene editing was “not a silver bullet” but “one of the elements we need to make farming more sustainable and resilient”.

The day after, several farmer and consumer groups gathered outside the EU Parliament to call for an end to work on the NGT regulation, joined by left-wing MEPs.

RIE, founded by former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, has been working on “depolarising” conversations on food systems for years, drawing on the work of the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells and the Portuguese-American neuroscientist Antonio Damasio.

According to von Holstein, groups often opposing each other share common goals – such as supporting small and medium-sized farmers and ensuring healthy soils – but find themselves in a vicious cycle that stifles the decision-making process.

“It is not about changing minds so much as changing the conversation,” she said. 

On 1-2 February, RIE will hold its annual forum in Lisbon – co-hosted by city mayor and former European Commissioner Carlos Moedas – bringing together stakeholders to discuss how to overcome irreconcilable positions, mistrust and fragmentation in domains such as taxes, climate and sustainable agriculture. 

The buzzword

“Depolarisation” of debate is the buzzword in the EU agrifood sector since the European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced in September a “strategic dialogue on the future of agriculture in the EU” calling for an “even closer cooperation” with the farming sector. 

“We need more dialogue and less polarisation”, said von der Leyen a few months before Europe began to be swept by farmers’ protests in France, Poland, Germany and Romania. 

The direct and indirect consequences of the war in Ukraine and the volatility of food prices, the use of biotechnology in agriculture and the transition towards sustainable food production are still divisive topics within the agricultural sector and in society.

[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro/Alice Taylor]

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