The Law for the Restoration of Nature (LRN) has suffered a strong setback in the European Parliament on Tuesday when it was rejected in the Environment commission. Although this does not mean its legislative death, it once again complicates its path to become one of the most ambitious standards in terms of biodiversity in the EU and in the world. The European Commission’s proposal, which plans to repair 20% of the EU’s terrestrial and marine surface by 2030 and all the ecosystems that need to be restored by 2050, is considered a key piece for the green transition of the Twenty-seven. But it has become a political throwing weapon since the European People’s Party (EPP) called to knock it down, in what its critics see as a new wink from its leader, Manfred Weber, to positions of the extreme right.
In this struggle that they have maintained for weeks, the conservatives have obtained something important on Tuesday – although not definitive – by achieving, in a very tense, close vote and, again, peppered with accusations of manipulation and pressure, that what finally out of the Environment Commission to the plenary is not a revised text of the law, but a formal proposal to reject it.
While members of the PPE celebrated a vote that, they affirm, shows that it is a “bad law”, the rapporteur responsible for the parliamentary proposal, the Spanish socialist César Luena, stressed that, despite the setback in this latest commission, the conservatives have not been able to prevent, as they sought, that the text died in commissions. “We have stopped the right-wing and extreme-right coalition and we are going to the plenary session. The processing of the LRN continues, which is what they wanted to prevent ”, he stated at a press conference after the vote.
The Spanish MEP believes that Weber’s strategy is a dangerous game. “Competing with the extreme right in the framework of the public debate of the extreme right. That always fails and he is beginning to see it in his country as well”, Luena launched in reference to the recent first victory of the ultra AfD party in a German region, Sonneberg, where the Alternative for Germany candidate beat his Christian Democrat rival from the CDU, sister to Weber’s CSU.
The EPP won its victory on Tuesday thanks to all the votes of its party – including several replacements chosen to replace original conservative members of the commission in favor of the regulations that Weber had ordered to reject – and the support of the ultra-conservatives of ECR and of the extreme right of ID, as well as four members of the liberal Renew.
The future of the LRN now depends on the plenary session of the European Parliament, in a vote that will probably take place in mid-July, although the popular ones prefer it to be in September. At that meeting, the 705 MEPs must first vote on the proposal adopted this Tuesday in the Environment Committee, which is to reject the law presented by the Commission. If that vote fails – and this is what the defenders of the legislation cling to, who affirm that in plenary the MEPs will have a freedom to vote that was more restricted in commissions, where some conservatives were replaced by other representatives of their party to that the voting line set by the EPP be followed—the LRN would once again have a chance to be voted on as a Parliament position. And if that happens, it would then go on to three-way negotiations to achieve a final legislative text agreed with the Commission and with the Council of the EU, which just a week ago approved its own version of the legal text at the meeting of environment ministers in Luxembourg. Spain, which will hold the current European presidency from July 1, has already said that it wants to prioritize the approval of the LRN.
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On June 15, the PPE failed in its first assault on the LRN, failing to get the same Environment commission to approve an amendment to all the conservatives and which would have meant the end of the regulations. That the Twenty-seven also approved their own negotiating position on the law a week later – with the support of several conservative governments – was a new setback for Weber, who is attributed a personal dispute with the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. (from the same political family) and who has been accused of putting pressure on both MEPs and governments in conservative hands to derail the regulations. He hasn’t made it, but he has made it wobble. Because the vote in a commission like the Environment was highly symbolic, and it also occurs after the rejection that the legislative proposal also received in the Fisheries and Agriculture commissions.
“The rejection of three commissions cannot be ignored,” Christine Schneider, the PPE’s chief environmental negotiator, said on Tuesday. The German conservative has called on the vice-president of the Commission and head of the Green Pact, Frans Timmermans, to withdraw the law and propose a new one, a point that the Dutch commissioner has already rejected since, with the European elections in less than a year, there is no would give time to draw up another legislative proposal.
The Nature Restoration Law is considered a key element of the great European green transition project and a pioneering measure in terms of biodiversity that will also help the EU to meet the international commitments agreed at the COP15 in Kunming-Montreal in December 2022, in particular on ecosystem restoration.
But it has run into opposition, above all, from some farmers’ and ranchers’ organizations, which say they are already dealing with numerous environmental impositions from Brussels. The PPE has wanted to capitalize on this discontent and, after participating for months in the negotiations of the final proposal, ended up a few weeks ago getting up from the table and calling for its withdrawal entirely, alleging that it threatens food safety —something that many scientists reject— and that will harm the countryside, among others.
“The entire PPE supports the objectives of the European Green Pact, its fundamental pillars, but the LRN is the wrong path, it is an impracticable proposal,” insisted Schneider, who recalled that his formation has supported many other environmental laws.
Despite the fact that some of his Renew colleagues also voted against, the commission’s president, Frenchman Pascal Canfin, accused Weber of having “rigged” the vote by forcing the replacement of conservative Environment members who did not want to flatly reject, as demanded by the leader of the PPE, the regulations. Like Luena, Canfin said he was “optimistic” for the plenary because, on that occasion, Weber will not be able to replace the rebel MEPs, he has pointed out. For his part, the socialist has summoned the president of the Commission to publicly speak out in favor of the law proposed by her team and rejected by her political family. “We are waiting for Von der Leyen’s reaction. We all know that there is a major internal fight in the EPP, but the first nature restoration law in the history of Europe cannot depend on an internal political row by the conservatives ”, he has warned.
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