European Union lawmakers on Tuesday, February 27, gave the final green light to a historic bill aimed at protecting nature in the bloc, nullifying conservative attempts to torpedo a law that has also angered farmers. .
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The plenary session of the European Parliament approved this Tuesday, February 27, the controversial Nature Restoration Law, which has become the center of tension between environmental protection and the demands of the agricultural sector.
The text received support with 329 votes in favor, 275 against and 24 abstentions in the hemicycle and to be officially adopted all that remains is for the Council of the European Union (EU), which represents the Member States, to also confirm what was agreed in the negotiation with the European Chamber and the European Commission.
“We have approved the first Nature Restoration Law in history. We went from protecting and conserving nature to repairing it,” said the chief negotiator of the European Parliament for the Nature Restoration Law, the Spanish César Luena (PSOE), on the social network X after the vote.
🗣️ We have approved the first law of nature in 70 years of European construction. With this law:
👉 We will have more resilient ecosystems
👉 We benefit agriculture and livestock
👉 We listen to science and civil societyLong live Europe!
Long live nature! pic.twitter.com/Foyr7zzpMw— César Luena / ❤️🇪🇺 (@cesarluena) February 27, 2024
This regulation is a central element of the EU's ambitious environmental goals under the Green Deal – a set of laws aimed at helping the bloc meet its climate goals – but farmers say they threaten their livelihoods.
The legislation requires the 27 member states of the European Union to take measures to recover at least 20% of the lands and seas of the bloc by 2030. But farmers have a long list of complaints and have taken to the streets across Europe, clogging roads, including in Brussels, where the EU institutions are based.
Protests continued Tuesday in Spain, where farmers from Catalonia gathered near the French border. Meanwhile, Thousands of Polish farmers demonstrated in Warsaw against the ecological agreement and other complaints.
They deplore overly restrictive environmental standards, competition from cheap imports from outside the European Union and low incomes. Heeding the request for less paperwork and bureaucracy, the conservative European People's Party (EPP) said at the beginning of the parliamentary session in Strasbourg that it would not approve the law, jeopardizing the future of the legislation.
These attempts were in vain, since The text was approved with the support of 329 legislators, while 275 voted against. It will come into force after its formal adoption by the EU States.
“The regulations will restore degraded ecosystems while respecting the agricultural sector by giving flexibility to member states,” said César Luena, who spearheaded the legislation in Parliament.
Before the vote, EPP head Manfred Weber said the law had been “poorly drafted.”
“The EPP group is fully committed to climate change and also to biodiversity targets, also agreed internationally, but this law is not delivering on these issues,” EPP head Manfred Weber told reporters in Strasbourg.
Fight for the survival of the planet
Liberal and socialist legislators, as well as environmental activists, applauded the measure. “The Nature Restoration Law has always been much more than a law to recover nature. It is a symbol that Europe can, and wants, to commit to fighting for the survival of our planet,” the coalition said in a statement # RestoreNature, formed by BirdLife Europe, ClientEarth, EEB and WWF EU.
Pascal Canfin, the French MEP who chairs Parliament's Environment Committee, thanked the EPP legislators who voted in favor of the text.
“If we have won the battle for the nature restoration law, it is because a part of The European right knew how to resist by allying itself with the anti-ecological populism of the extreme rightin the face of the multiple false and misleading attacks against this text,” he stated. Finally, he added that the law was committed to reversing the trend towards the regression of nature in Europe.
But not everyone was happy. Right-wing ECR MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen, who voted against, called his approval “very unfortunate.” “The consequences will be enormous,” he warned.
“It is very imprudent that a small majority of the European Parliament has just approved the Nature Restoration Law. This puts the countryside in a confinement, a crisis of #nitrogen 2.0. Nature conservation will be more important than food securityhousing needs or road safety,” he added on social networks.
By News Wires, with AFP
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