Seeding Legitimacy, Framing the Future: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and European Governance of Agricultural Biotechnology (1990-2023)

Sammanfattning

European agriculture is shaped by technical debates whose implications are deeply political. When the European Commission decides on the safety of an agricultural technique, it is settling a scientific question whilst also making a political choice: which knowledge matters, which risks deserve attention, and which futures are worth investing in. This thesis analyses the evolution of the European Commission’s socio-technical imaginary in the field of agricultural biotechnology, from Directive 90/220/EEC (1990)—the first European regulation on GMOs—to proposal COM(2023)411 on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs). Drawing on Science and Technology Studies by mobilising the concepts of socio-technical imaginaries, co-production and boundary work, the study examines how the Commission constructs, stabilises and reconfigures the regulatory legitimacy of agricultural biotechnology through its official documents. The analysis is structured around two periods: 1990–2004 and 2018–2023. It argues that scientific reasoning is selectively used to silence political dissent, thereby imposing a particular definition of legitimate expertise. The trajectory analysed is not one of a break or linear continuity, but rather a logic of overlapping where the Commission reconstructs the conditions of legitimacy for its regulatory authority.