The European Court of Justice's decision that CRISPR'd plants are GMOs is the right interpretation of a law that is bonkers
The European Court of Justice (think of it as the European Supreme Court) declared that CRISPR'd plants count as GMOs.
I think the Court is correct, CRISPR'd plants are GMOs. The EU does not have a tradition of "legislation by judicial decision" like the US's Supreme Court (although there have been some instances of such, as in the Uber case). Thus, even though I wish the decision had gone the other way as a matter of legislation, as a matter of legal interpretation, it seems clear that the intent of the law was to ban modern biotechnology as scary and, I don't see how CRISPR does not fill that role.
The decision is scientifically bonkers, in that it says that older atomic gardening plants are kosher, but the exact same organism would be illegal if it were to be obtained by bioengineering methods. According to this decision, you can use CRISPR to obtain and test a mutation. At this point, it's a GMO, so you cannot sell it in most of Europe. Then you use atomic gardening, PCR, and cross-breeding and you obtain exactly the same genotype. However, now, it's not a GMO, so it's fine to sell it. The property of being a GMO is not a property of the plant, but the property of its history. Some plants may carry markers which will identify them as GMOs, but there may be many cases where you can have two identical plants, only one of which is a GMO. This has irked some scientists (see this NYT article), but frankly, it is the original GMO law that is bonkers in that it regulates a method of how to obtain a plant instead of regulating the end result.
On this one, blame the lawmakers, not the court.
HT/ @PhilippBayer