LEGAL PROTECTION OF PLANTS IN THE CONTEXT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: THE EU EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The article offers a comprehensive legal analysis of the system of plant protection in the European Union, understood not merely as a set of phytosanitary measures, but as a multilayered normative architecture spanning plant health law, the placing on the market and sustainable use of plant protection products, the regulation of plant reproductive material, and the regime of Community plant variety rights. The proposed study argues that the legal protection of plants in the EU is undergoing a gradual but profound transformation: from a predominantly risk-management oriented framework, focused on quarantine pests and the authorisation of plant protection products, towards an integrated sustainability-oriented model that connects plant health with soil and water protection, biodiversity conservation, food safety and the legal position of farmers. The aim of the article is to reconstruct the internal logic and hierarchy of EU plant protection instruments and to identify the principal fault lines between the plant health regime, the rules on plant protection products, the emerging framework for sustainable use, the reform of EU seed and plant reproductive material law and the sui generis system of plant variety protection. Methodologically, the research relies on a doctrinal analysis of regulations, directives and softlaw documents, a comparative examination of plant variety protection and breeders’ exemption, a systemic interpretation of the interactions between different layers of plant-related regulation, and teleological and value-oriented reading of Union policy strategies on sustainability, biodiversity and food systems. The results show, first, that the new Plant Health Law and the proposed Regulation on the sustainable use of plant protection products strengthen the preventive and systemic dimensions of risk regulation, but at the same time sharpen distributional conflicts between Member States and societal groups. Second, the article demonstrates that the Community plant variety rights system, complemented by the notion of essentially derived varieties, increasingly structures innovation pathways in plant breeding, especially in the context of digitalisation and new breeding techniques, while raising concerns about concentration of rights and access to genetic resources. In conclusion, the article maintains that EU plant protection law is becoming a central node of a broader, still unfinished transition towards a sustainable agri-food legal order. This transition is marked by persistent tensions between different regulatory rationalities: risk control, market integration, technological innovation, environmental protection and human rights.