Open letter: ECVC calls on MEPs to protect farmers' rights on seeds by rejecting the proposal on NGTs, and supporting necessary changes to the proposal on PRM

Open letter: ECVC calls on MEPs to protect farmers' rights on seeds by rejecting the proposal on NGTs, and supporting necessary changes to the proposal on PRM Brussels, 16th April 2024 Dear Members of European Parliament, During the Plenary session of 22-25 April, you will be voting on two key proposals for farmers’ rights on seeds and the future of EU agriculture: the proposal on the marketing of. [...] Farmers’ seed exchanges is not only a right, it is also necessary to allow dynamic management of seeds at the farm, and therefore adaptation of seeds to local growing and climatic conditions, and the renewal of agrobiodiversity. [...] ECVC calls on all MEPs to support these necessary improvements, and especially the modifications adopted concerning: o A stricter definition of marketing, which considers that only transfers in view of marketing fall in the scope of the regulation, therefore excluding exchanges of PRM between farmers from rules that apply to professional operators. [...] Even though the European Parliament has called on the 7th of February for a modification of European patent law to forbid patentability of NGTs, the Parliament and even the EU alone cannot change the rules of the European Patent Convention, which includes non- EU members. [...] On top of that, Parliament should not consolidate its vote on this file when there are many unresolved issues, such as an upcoming opinion of EFSA on the scientific basis of the proposal in July 2024 and a study on the impact of patents to be published by the European Commission in 2025.