The long-awaited update of the first guidance document of 2016 was adopted and released by the European Commission on 14 December 2020. The new Guidance document C(2020)8759 (with Annexes I and II) incorporates and complements the previous document, and was again developed in consultation
with stakeholders from all important sectors, including experts from the field of culture collections. It explains the scope of application and obligations under the Regulation (EU) No 511/2014 (EU ABS Regulation), and provides numerous example cases. Importantly, several issues that were not or were insufficiently treated in the 2016 guidance document, have now been clarified, such as how to deal with screening studies and laboratory strains. The question whether digital information on genetic resources (especially digital sequence information, DSI) would fall in scope of the Nagoya protocol is still under consideration of the Parties, and thus could not be addressed in this new guidance.