The EPP group’s Sirpa Pietikäinen (cok) defends the restoration and wonders if her own group’s activities are “quite hygienic”. The committee’s vote is getting tricky.
Strasbourg
in the EU Parliament a tight vote is expected on Thursday, when the Parliament’s environment committee votes on its position on the controversial nature restoration.
Some of the committee members want to reject the proposal, some would be ready to let it go forward with corrections. The final result can depend on one or two votes.
The intention is that the entire parliament will take a position on the issue in the July plenary session. The plenary hearing will be a Finnish meppi Elsi Katainen (central) according to “one crazy mill” if the committee now rejects the proposal.
Finland has it strong representation in the environment committee. The actual members of the committee are: Teuvo Hakkarainen (ps), Silvia Modig (left), Ville Niinistö (green) and Nils Torvalds (r). It’s available Sirpa Pietikäinen (cook). Elsi Katainen has discussed restoration in the agriculture committee.
Commission according to the original proposal, it would be mandatory for member countries to restore nature and improve its condition. In the background there is concern about the deterioration of biodiversity and the loss of species.
The Commission’s proposal has received criticism in Finland for, among other things, poor impact assessments and high costs.
The center-right EPP group in the parliament wants to overturn the restoration decree and has imposed strict group discipline on the committee members.
Only those members of the EPP group who support the rejection of the regulation are allowed to go to the committee to vote.
EPP member deputy member Sirpa Pietikäinen wonders aloud whether her own party group’s actions in the matter are “perfectly hygienic”. Pietikäinen supports the adoption of the regulation, because according to him, in the restoration of nature, doing nothing always costs more than doing.
Pietikäinen may be present at the committee meeting if necessary, but not vote. Such strict group discipline only applies to the committee, no longer to the July plenary session.
According to Pietkäinen, his own group’s concerns that the restoration will discipline European agriculture are “a bit exaggerated”. He considers the reason for EPP’s irritation to be the party’s politics and the group’s desire to raise its profile before the next parliamentary election, so that votes would not leak from the EPP to parties that are even further to the right.
The presentation issued by the EU Commission can also blame itself for the deadlocked handling, because the commissioner responsible for environmental affairs Frans Timmermans for a long time took an arrogant attitude to the concerns about restoration that arose in the parliament and in the member states.
“Timmermans’ pompous style has not worked”, Ville Niinistö assesses.
Several MEPs, including Elsi Katainen, who sits on the agriculture committee, accuse Timmermans and his cabinet of pressuring members of parliament behind the regulation. According to Katainen, they went to “rant” to key negotiators.
Presentation will come to the July plenary session in any case, even if the committee rejects the motion – after that the situation would just be chaotic, Nils Torvalds estimated. The proposal would come to the plenary session in the form presented by the commission, in which case the parliamentarians would make a huge number of amendments to it or reject the entire regulation.
If the regulation were to be rejected in the plenary session, then the Parliament would probably ask the Commission to prepare the regulation again. It will hardly be possible during this commission’s term, but would be left to the commission starting in 2024.
It would mean that the actions taken for the benefit of biodiversity in the EU would be many years behind the planned schedule, just when the loss of nature is rising in the threat assessments to the same category as climate change.
According to Ville Niinistö, relaxations and flexibilities are coming to the restoration regulation following the environmental committee, which the commission has also supported. According to Niinistö, after the flexibilities, the regulation is a “framework”, which mainly schedules previously agreed actions, to which Finland, for example, has already committed.
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