After months of often impassioned public debate Germany’s Bundestag has voted to liberalise the nation’s law on research involving embryonic stem cells. Researchers say that the change will allow them to more effectively compete—and collaborate—internationally.

The revised law, approved on 11 April, will allow German scientists to import stem cell lines derived from embryos before 1 May 2007, although the process to derive stem cells will still be banned in Germany. Under the old law the import cut-off date was 1 January 2002, meaning that scientists had access to only about 40 outdated stem cell lines. Now they will be able to …