49
however, has been quite limited. EFSA only provides risk assessment opinions.
Stakeholder consultation and participation in policymaking per a deliberative model
remain scant. References to these governance modes appear primarily as responses to
legitimacy challenges to EU risk management decisions, as opposed to alternative modes
of governance.
Perhaps most importantly, the case of agricultural biotech regulation in the EU
points to the limitations of EU supranational policymaking when regulatory issues
become highly politicized for mass publics. Neither adoption of a more centralized
regulatory model, nor attempts to complement it with transgovernmental and stakeholder
modes of policy-making, have shielded EU risk management decisions over GMO
approvals from public challenge. In the area of GMOs, member state politicians, reacting
to their public’s lack of acceptance of EU decision-making, have thwarted numerous
attempts to implement a harmonized EU approach, and, in the process, ratcheted up the
stringency of EU-level requirements. This dynamic between member state publics, their
national representatives, and EU authorities appears to best explain the gap to date
between the Union’s law-in-the-books for GMOs and its law-in-action. Disputes over risk
regulation in this domain risk becoming disputes over the legitimacy of EU law itself.
“taking ethical and social issues into account as well as the science,” operating with “maximum openness
and transparency,” and building on “public dialogue.” The commission’s home page is at
http://www.aebc.gov.uk/
. As regards EFSA’s efforts at greater transparency, see Press release, European
Food Safety Authority, “European Food Safety Authority Plans Greater Public Involvement in its Work,”
(Dec. 3, 2003), available at
http://www.efsa.eu.int/press_room/press_release/31_en.html
. (“The most
significant recommendation accepted by the Board today will be to involve consumers and other
stakeholders in the Authority’s work, including setting up a stakeholder forum, and to hold public hearings
on significant scientific issues”).
Convention