Understanding the politics of the European Union food nanotechnology regulatory choices

Nano-innovations in the agrifood system have not yet received an adequate regulatory framework. Regulatory delays have been generally ascribed to technological causes, such as the difficulties in risk characterization of very different compounds. Social and political issues have received scant attention instead. This article endeavours to explain the regulatory processes of agri-food nanotechnologies in the European Union (EU), stemming from a wider perspective that shifts attention to the institutional architectures of regulatory bodies, and to power relationships among organizations and stakeholders involved in regulatory processes. To unveil the ‘politics’ of the regulatory process the article examines the EU regulatory choices using two analytical tools-perspectives: 1) the classical five benchmarks suggested by the literature on regulation for defining a ‘good regulation’; 2) the two-dimensional view of power explained by the literature on power, i.e., the agenda power. The study’s results strongly suggest that the current EU regulatory process is driven more by power relationships among stakeholders than by a true democratic decisional process.