About UEAA, Governance, Minutes
03 04 2025
December, 17th 2024, Bucharest, Romania
DRAFT MINUTES OF THE SC ZOOM MEETING BUCHAREST
December 17th, 2024, h: 10.00 a.m. Paris time, CET time
R E P O R T – MINUTES
Attendees:
1. President – Ioan Jelev (Romanian Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences)
2. Vice-president – Nazim Gruda (Academy of Science of Albania)
3. Former President – Elena Horská (Slovak Academy of Agricultural Science)
4. Kerstin Niblaeus (Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry)
5. Michel Duclos (French Academy of Agriculture)
6. Vasile Botnari (Academy of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences of Moldova)
7. Violeta Bozhanova (Agricultural Academy of Bulgaria)
8. Baiba Rivža (Latvia Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences)
9. Simone Orlandini (Accademia dei Georgofili, Italy)
10. Vilém Podrázský (Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences)
11. Hojka Kraigher (Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts)
– Michel Thibier, UEAA President’ Counselor (French Academy of Agriculture)
– Zenonas Dabkevičius, Alumni member (Lithuanian Academy of Sciences)
Absentee:
Shamil Ibatullin, observer: (National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine).
Apologies from:
– Evi Arachoviti (Great Britain, Royal Agricultural Society of England/ Innovation for Agriculture)
The members deliberated on the following Agenda:
1. Welcome address by President.
2. Analysis and approval of the Draft Minutes of the UEAA General Assembly of October 10, 2024, Bucharest and the related Report, with a view to their approval by the future UEAA General Assembly of 2026.
3. Approval of SC meeting Minutes (October 10, 2024, before GA)
4. Approval of SC meeting Minutes (October 10, 2024, past GA)
5. Strategic dialogue – a future for EU agriculture and 2024-2026 UEAA priorities
6. “Best Scientific Abstract Competition 2024” – info about discussion and conclusion – Michel Duclos, announcement
7. About the attracting of new members with Observer status
8. Updates: Forest strategy, Gene editing, CAP
9. Newsletters
10. Miscellaneous
11. Close of the meeting (12:00)
Agenda item 1 – Welcome address by President
The President Ioan Jelev opened the meeting and welcomed all participants. He made a brief information on the activities carried out in his capacity as the new President, since the last meeting in October, 2024, highlighting the following: finalizing a large number of documents resulting from Bucharest meeting, updating of the UEAA web page with the new UEAA SC composition, UEAA Motion on Genome Editing and amendments of the Charter; elaboration of GA and SC minutes and reports, also reflected in the UEAA web page and in different members academies web pages or even in press, especially UEAA motion which was reflected very well; the activity developed by vice-president Nazim in planning the UEAA newsletter for the next period; strong involvement of Michel Duclos in processing of the summaries received and their posting on the web site. The president also underlined that with the support of Nazim Gruda and Simone Orlandini, two letters were drafted and sent to the attention of presidents of ALLEA and EASAC proposing a possible future cooperation.
The meeting Agenda was unanimously adopted.
Agenda item 2 – Analysis and approval of the Draft Minutes of the UEAA General Assembly of October 10th, 2024, Bucharest and the related Report, with a view to their approval by the future UEAA General Assembly of 2026
The draft minutes and related report of the 12th UEAA General Assembly were circulated electronically to members for corrections and all comments received were incorporated. There were no further comments.
✓ The draft minutes and the related Report from UEAA General Assembly on October 10, 2024, in Bucharest (as corrected) were unanimously approved
Agenda item 3 – Approval of SC meeting Minutes (October 10th, 2024, before GA)
The draft minutes of the SC meeting held before GA circulated electronically to members for corrections.
✓ The SC meeting Minutes was unanimously approved.
Agenda item 4 – Approval of SC meeting Minutes (October 10th, 2024, past GA)
The draft minutes of the SC meeting held immediately after GA circulated electronically to members for corrections.
✓ The SC meeting Minutes was unanimously approved.
Agenda item 5 – Strategic dialogue – a future for EU agriculture and 2024-2026 UEAA priorities
President Jelev reminded about the UEAA Electronic Working Group on CAP, led by Mrs. Carmel Cahill, within which strong debates took place and where a document was drafted and sent to the European Commission – prof. Peter Strohschneider, following the invitation to consultation on the Strategic Dialogue – a future for EU agriculture received from the President of EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
He asked members about their ideas on improving and continuing this dialogue in future, probably depending on the requirements of the UE Commission for continuing such a dialogue.
Kerstin Niblaeus suggested to consult Carmel if this group could somehow follow what happens now in the Commission, being important to know the timetable and what they are doing in order to be prepared and see when there is a chance to provide some input to the process.
Michel Thibier fully agreed with the idea of contacting Carmel to see what the activities are now within this working group and to ask her suggestion regarding future involvement in this topic, to report at the next SC meeting to know what she will do in the first quarter of 2025.
President Jelev concluded that he will contact Carmel to express members’ interest in this group activities and to develop future involvement of the UEAA SC in this dialogue, which probably will have a character of permanency.
Agenda item 6 – Best Scientific Abstract Competition 2024 – info about discussion and conclusion – Michel Duclos, announcement
President Jelev thanked to Michel Duclos for his strongly involvement in this activity, and said that an increased number of abstract were received in the last weeks from Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, Check Republic, Spain and Latvia. He also thanked to Simone Orlandini, Nazim Gruda, Violeta Bozhanova, Vilem Podrazski, Maria Pais, Baiba Rivza, who contributed with an important number of abstract from colleagues in their academies, and asked Michel Duclos to say a few words regarding this process.
Michel Duclos announced that the deadline for submitting abstracts, which was set for December 15th, has ended and a number of 28 abstracts were received and posted on the UEAA website, thus the evaluation process should be organized and decide as soon as possible in early 2025.
Nazim suggested to have at least the working groups and start the evaluation this year in order to announce the winner at the beginning of 2025.
Prof. Jelev asked for proposals or volunteers for establishing the members of the two evaluation groups for the first stage, and requested Michel and Nazim to take the coordination of these activity together.
Baiba Rivza, Simone Orlandini, Hojka Kraigher, Elena Horska, and Michel Duclos agreed to be members of the groups of evaluation, and it was established to ask also Zenonas Dabkevicius (who had to leave the meeting early). In case Zenonas is unable to participate, he will be replaced by Vilém Podrazski. After the formation of the two groups, the deadline for the first evaluation stage will be established later by Michel Duclos.
Agenda item 7 – About the attracting of new members with Observer status
President Jelev referred that recently the number of participants in the SC and GA meetings has slightly decreased, also due to the difficult period faced such as the pandemic and the nearby war, and one objective is to strengthen the Union with new members and this must be the aim of each member to find new proposals to attract new academies/universities/research institutes that can get involve in the activities of the Union and asked how to deal with this, to set a goal.
The opinion of vice-president Gruda was that the priority should be to focus on how to involve other countries that have no representative in SC group, such as Turkey, Germany or Holland or other.
Michel Thibier recalled how he together with Kristine proceeded 10 years back when they had the same situation and said that the best way to approach the problem was to have personal contacts with colleagues from other countries.
Vice-president Gruda also added that the content of the e-mail is very important, and should address of what Union is really doing and a very good point in this way would be the mention of the strategical discussion with the European Commission, the topics like genomic editing, forest, also abstract could be mentioned, in order to have the image that the Union is very good involved in important topics in Europe.
involved in the activities. She added that regarding the other Nordic countries, it is not so easy because they don’t really have agricultural academies as in Sweden, but a good way to handle it was to go through the foreign members of the academy and ask their advice regarding institution similar with agricultural academy, that is how she did when she contacted Denmark, Finland, Norway, they may be still on the UEAA website. But what happened then? They were supposed to be active, but the pandemic came and everything changed being now in a situation when it is not so easy to argue for somebody to be just a member in the UEAA. What matters now is the SC and we can have observers. It is absolutely right to give more information about these different areas where UEAA communicated with the EU system, she said. The intention of Ioan and Nazim was to set up something on climate changes topic as well. Perhaps we can attract other contributors by asking if they like to join in any of these groups. Maybe Finland would be interested in the forest area, and if we have a new group on climate maybe we could actively try to involve some representatives from Finland. It is important to think about organizations, not to approach individuals but somehow try to find an academy of something similar that could be registered as a member.
Nazim Gruda asked Kerstin what is her opinion for the academies that in the website are still members but no representative is in the Union, for example Norway, who is a member but not an active one, how it can be proceed to contact them and she said she would ask them if they can join to one of the UEAA working group.
Michel Thibier suggested members to think about that each member of the SC takes the lead of the electronic working group on the topic for which they have an expertise in their academy, giving example the experience of French that have been involved in gene editing electronic group, which was very efficient in 2022 due to their proposal made to EC, and if UEAA have the same with CAP EWG, with Carmel, that would be good, or forestry EWG with the lead of the Sweden or other country interested (maybe Check Republic) that would be positive. Each one of us in our country, from Slovak area, from Italy or Albania and so on, that would probably make some sense and would attract more people, he said. Climatic is a very good point and issue obviously, and if anyone of the academies member of this SC is interested and have a good expert that would be able to take the lead of EWG on this topic would be perfect on behalf of the UEAA.
President Jelev fully agreed with the proposals of Michel Thibier, Nazim Gruda and Kerstin Niblaeus and said that he will also try to reestablish contact with Georgian Academy, a very important and active member of the Union in the past during the presidency of prof. Guram, and thanked to Kerstin and Nazim for their support in contacting Norway and Germany.
Agenda item 8 – Updates: Forest strategy, Gene editing, CAP
President Jelev gave the floor to Michel Thibier who prepared a short intervention about gene editing working group.
At first, Michel Thibier pointed out that the work which has been reported from Bucharest meeting has impressed a quite a lot of people. The people interested in gene editing group have noted with pleasure that UEAA was involved and the motion that was put on in Bucharest impressed those people.
He then summarized the current genetic situation as follows:
“ Increasing gap between EU and the rest of the world;
This concerns both the regulations side and commercialization.
1.Regulations:
Regulatory relaxation in many countries as documented:
See: Gene Editing and New Breeding Techniques: Regulations, Ratings and Index
By Regulation tracker, Genetic Literacy Project https://crispr-gene-editing-regs-tracker.geneticliteracyproject.org
• there is a relaxation of the regulation for 24 countries (including Canada, USA, China and others).
• with no restriction in 8 countries, Costa Rica recently voted for no restriction,
• approved on a case by case basis: 16 countries, (Argentina, Brazil and others)
• debate underway 9 countries including EU;
In terms of continents: Asia (China, Japan and Philippines., North America, South and Central America (Costa Rica voted for no restriction), pave the way by their leadership.
By contrast, nothing moves in the EU. Current 2024 Presidency is Hungary, and it did not put this item on its Agenda, not mentioning the new EU Parliament.
To be noticed: Excellent recent (Nov 2024) published paper:
Genome editing in Latin America: research achievements and regulatory evolution
Alejandro Hernández‑Soto 1 · Andrés Gatica‑Arias
Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (PCTOC) (2024) 159:55
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11240-024-02904-
2 Commercialization
From the comprehensive table of the Regulation tracker, Genetic Literacy Project,
the Approved Gene Edited / NBT Crops Current list of foods developed by New Breeding Techniques that are approved for sale. One can notice the following:
2.1. There are now 14 products commercialized around the world: Japan : 4 ; US: 5; China: 1, Philippines: 1; US/ Canada :3
Japan, which has no commercialized GMOs, is emerging as a leader in the introduction of gene edited crops.
2.2. Most recent ones, in 2024: see table, here below
One may notice that there is for the first time one item for animals, the slick coat cattle particularly relevant when considering the climatic changes.
The general conclusion: (quoting that of the Regulation tracker, Genetic Literacy Project):
“The regulations on genetically engineered crops and animals are emerging out of the regulatory landscape developed for transgenic GMOs”. This is good news but alas, where is the EU up to? far behind!”
As a conclusion, prof. Thibier said what now matter is to keep contact with EU Commission and the observation is that there is an increasing gap in gene editing between EU and the rest of the world.
President Jelev thanked Michel Thibier for the excellent analysis done, and said that it is very important to include this intervention in the Minutes and asked his agreement to put it also on the UEAA website and he agreed.
Kerstin thanked for this information and said that is very important to forward it. She mentioned that they have a working group in the academy for gene editing and they asked her if there was any knowledge within the various UEAA academies about the position of the governments in their countries. They asked her specifically about the situation in Poland and any information about government position in any country is lightly to change is very interesting. Another point was that this working group on gene editing made a proposal to facilitate this legislative discussion in the EU about the patent which is now the remaining outstanding issue and they requested Kerstin if she can somehow forward this in the UEAA network. She asked Michel Thibier if she can send it to him to have a look and maybe him forward it to the UEAA SC members.
Michel Thibier replied that at the end of the 2024 he will stop leading this working group and he asked who would be interested in taking over the leading of this group.
Thus, Kerstin asked Prof. Jelev to come back to this issue in the next SC meeting to see how this working group could continue and added that she will send the proposal of their working group to the UEAA SC members.
Prof. Jelev said that it would be very useful to put on the agenda of the next SC meeting the question of the leading of gene editing EWG and also other aspects in this field, such as the access of the Central and Eastern European countries to the research results, and he kindly asked members to make some suggestions about the possibility of taking over the leading of this working group.
President Jelev invited Kerstin Niblaeus to make a brief introduction about forestry working group.
Kerstin told that when it comes to the decision making process in the EU it has been rather quiet as the new EU Commission and Parliament are coming up, but maybe at the next meeting of the UEAA SC there will be more to say about that and maybe UEAA should set up a kind of working group because we don’t really have that, it has been very informal and loose so far. As an information, she said that the Swedish Commissioner of the EU is responsible for environment and also several of this forestry related legislations so that gives them the possibilities of contacts. Sweden is also, for 4 years now, chair of Forest Europe, a voluntary organization which has been quite important in the input to the EU.
She also mentioned that in her academy they have set up a working group on the nature restoration law that has been adopted and now the member states should make their national restoration plans by September 2026. They are setting up a certain network there and have had small submittings with the responsible people in DG Environment and also with the EU Environment Agency in Copenhagen and they have contacts in Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and maybe more countries. This has started very well and they will come back with organizing online meetings, which might be of interest.
Prof. Jelev thanked Kerstin Niblaeus for the important aspects she related.
Regarding the CAP working group, president Jelev said that, as it was discussed before, he will contact Carmel and express members interest to continue these activities.
Agenda item 9 – Newsletters
President Jelev said that a strong support in establishing a clear plan for this year until December 2025 came from Nazim Gruda. He read it and asked prof. Gruda if he has something to comment.
Prof. Gruda thanked to all colleagues for their effort to have a newsletter from each country every month. He made a suggestion to put newsletters in LinkedIn to be continuously present in the platform because it is a professional one.
Agenda item 10 – Miscellaneous
The President thanked all SC members for their attendance, contributions and support and on the occasion of the winter holidays, he wished them a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.