Plant research and breeding has made substantial technical progress over the past few decades, indicating a potential for tremendous societal impact. Due to this potential, the development of policies and legislation on plant breeding and the technical progress should preferably involve all relevant stakeholders. However, we argue here that there is a substantial imbalance in the European Union (EU) regarding the influence of the various stakeholder groups on policy makers. We use evidence from three examples in order to show that the role of science is overlooked: 1) important delays in the decision process concerning the authorization of genetically modified (GM) maize events, 2) the significance attributed to non-scientific reasons in new legislation concerning the prohibition of GM events in EU member states, and 3) failure of the European Commission to deliver legal guidance to new plant breeding techniques despite sufficient scientific evidence and advisory reports. We attribute this imbalance to misinformation and misinterpretation of public perceptions and a disproportionate attention to single outlier reports, and we present ideas on how to establish a better stakeholder balance within this field.

中文翻译：

---

欧盟负责植物研究和育种创新的决策。

在过去的几十年中，植物研究和育种取得了实质性的技术进步，表明了巨大的社会影响力。由于这种潜力，有关植物育种的政策和法规以及技术进步的发展最好应包括所有相关利益方。但是，我们在这里认为，在各个利益相关者团体对政策制定者的影响方面，欧盟存在着严重的不平衡。我们使用来自三个示例的证据来表明科学的作用被忽略了：1）有关转基因玉米事件授权的决策过程中的重大延误，2）归因于新的非科学原因的重要性关于在欧盟成员国禁止转基因事件的法律，3）尽管有足够的科学证据和咨询报告，欧洲委员会仍未能为新的植物育种技术提供法律指导。我们将这种不平衡归因于对公众看法的错误信息和误解，以及对单个异常值报告的过分关注，并且我们提出了有关如何在该领域中建立更好的利益相关者平衡的想法。