The European Union approved this Monday (17), definitively, the first regulation in its history that obliges Member States to restore nature, and not just protect it, after a process with surprises until the last minute to close a dossier that Hungary almost dropped and that Austria ended up saving.
On the eve of this Monday’s vote, Vienna switched to the “yes” side, and this allowed the EU Council to reach the minimum qualified majority required: 66.07% of the bloc’s population, slightly above the 65% required.
The regulation had already been negotiated and agreed between the States themselves and also with the European Parliament, which approved it in February in a plenary session.
It only needed to be formally adopted by the 27 member states, but it was almost derailed at the finish line due to a sudden change of position by Hungary, which joined opponents in March, when the Council only needed to confirm the text.
“Let’s leave our ideology behind and let’s work together”, Virginijus Sinkevicius, the European commissioner responsible for the matter, said at the Council of Environment Ministers debating the text.
The European Commissioner had described the impasse as “worrying” for the credibility of EU institutions, criticisms that were joined by countries such as Greece, Germany and Denmark, and which the Spanish minister, Teresa Ribera, described as an institutional “horror film”. .
This is the fourth dossier in the last two and a half years that, after being negotiated and agreed, the Council reopened at the last minute, after the Renewables Directive, which France blocked, and the laws to prevent the sale of vehicles that emit CO2 at from 2035 and due diligence for companies, which Germany has slowed down.
Austrian crisis
After the Hungarian blockade, the Austrian minister once again tipped the scales “in favor of biodiversity” by interpreting that she has the legal right to support the text due to a change of balance at the federal level in her country.
“In 20 or 30 years, when I show the beauty of our country to my granddaughters and they ask me what you did, I will tell them that I did everything I could to preserve it,” said the environment minister from Austria, Leonore Gewessler, an environmentalist, upon arriving at the council.
But her change of position caused a split in the Austrian government, which is holding legislative elections in September, due to the total rejection of her government partner, the People’s Party (ÖVP), which considers that she did not respect federal legislation.
The Austrian government, led by conservative Karl Nehammer, will file an annulment appeal with the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), according to the local news agency APA.
The regulation was finally adopted with the favorable votes of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia , the votes against by Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland and Sweden and the abstention by Belgium.
What does the law say
In June 2022, the European Commission introduced the Nature Restoration Act to restore at least 20% of degraded ecosystems by 2030 and all of them by mid-century, including agricultural land.
The aim is to align EU legislation with UN biodiversity agreements, but the text has become a symbol of the ideological battle over the green agenda, gaining intensity as the June 9 European elections approach.
The law suffered several setbacks in the EU Council and narrowly survived a long series of agonizing votes in the European Parliament, where it was the target of an aggressive campaign by the European People’s Party and the group’s president in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, of the influential lobby agricultural Copa-Cogeca and right-wing parties.
Among other points, the regulation establishes obligations to correct the decline in pollinators, recover 30% of peatlands drained for agricultural use, not reduce urban green spaces and eliminate artificial barriers in EU rivers. (With EFE Agency)
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