The French government has been ordered to abandon restrictions on genetically modified crops by the country's supreme court. The ban was introduced last year in response to a similar ruling which nullified previous anti-GM legislation.

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The French Conseil d'Etat declared on Thursday that the government's ban on growing Monsanto's GM MON810 maize, currently the only such crop licensed for production in the EU, contravenes EU law. The government introduced the ban in March 2012 arguing that it was needed to protect the country's natural environment.

A series of bans introduced by authorities in France, the EU's largest agricultural producer, where resistance to GM is rife, have led to the country being targeted by GM interests in the past. A series of diplomatic cables, unearthed by Wikileaks in 2010 show US government ambassadors had proposed starting a trade war to "[cause] some pain across the EU" in response to a French government ban on GM crops from Misouri-based agribusiness Monsanto three years earlier.

In a hearing last month, French legislators said the safeguard clauses ministers had used to secure the 2012 ban had little scientific justification. They said France's moratorium would only be legally defensible if it had been taken in response to "an emergency or… a major risk" to public health or the environment.

Undeterred, French agriculture minister Stephane LeFoll and newly appointed ecology minister Philippe Martin both declared that they would work immediately to ensure another ban is introduced as soon as possible. The pair said in a joint statement that civil servants will attempt to find fresh legal means of reintroducing the measures, "in order to prevent environmental and economic risks to other crops and apiculture" form the cultivation of GM crops.

They intend to bring new measures into force before April next year, before farmers begin sowing spring crops. Ahead of Thursday's ruling, agriculture minister LeFoll said his department opposes GM crops, especially the herbicide-resistant variety at the centre of the current legal struggle.      

Italian authorities, with overwhelming public backing, finalised a ban on GM crops in July, making Italy the ninth EU state to declare itself GM-free. Figures released by the country's main farming union Coldiretti earlier this year show that 76 percent of Italians oppose GM crops, and that anti-GM sentiment in Italy has galvanised since last year.

In the United States, farmers in the Pacific Northwest are breathing a collective sigh of relief, as major trade partners have gradually resumed accepting shipments of white wheat grown in the region, following a series of import bans introduced after an unlicensed strain of herbicide resistant GM wheat was discovered growing in an Oregon field in May. The wheat is thought to have outcrossed from open air field trials conducted in the region over ten years ago.

Back in Europe, although Monsanto's maize is the only GM crop currently approved for cultivation in the block, its license ran out in 2007, but the renewal process has been deadlocked ever since.