munich

The ‘internal market’ ministers of the member states of the European Union last week approved the latest draft of the European Commission's directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, which allows the patenting of human genes as well as transgenic plants and animals.

The controversial directive has already been approved by the European Parliament in its first reading last July, following revisions to an earlier draft rejected two years ago (see Nature 388, 314; 314> =1997). A text formally approved by the Council of Ministers is likely to be submitted to the parliament early next year. Assuming — as most commentators do — a reasonably trouble-free ride through its second parliamentary reading, the directive is likely to be adopted by the end of next summer.

The council's approval has dismayed environmentalist and other anti-patenting pressure groups, which continue to oppose the directive on moral grounds. But it has lifted spirits in the European Patent Office, where work on patent applications for biotechnological inventions has halted because of uncertainty over whether its own rules allow patents on life.