This book offers a topical inquiry into the legal and political limits of European Union regulation in the field of risk and new technologies surrounded by techno-scientific complexity, uncertainty, and societal contestation. It uses agricultural biotechnology as a paradigmatic example to illustrate the complex intersection between environmental, public health, economic, and social concerns in risk regulation. The text analyses the drawbacks of the European Union approach to agricultural biotechnology showing that its reductionism, that is, the narrow understanding of the risks associated with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as well as the exclusion of broader societal concerns related to environmental and social sustainability, has undermined both the legitimacy and effectiveness of EU regulation in this area. Resistance to this approach, however, has also triggered legal innovations prompting us to rethink EU internal market law, including the way in which it manages the tensions between unity and diversity, and between social and economic concerns. This book examines how far the EU can go in harmonizing regulatory approaches to risk. At the same time, it proposes new ways of rethinking EU risk regulation to make it more responsive to different perspectives on risk and technology.
Risk Regulation in the Internal Market: Lessons from Agricultural Biotechnology Maria Weimer Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, 304 pp. £63.00. Hardback