The President of the European Parliament Robert Metsola has taken the unusual step of wading into the debate over the EU Nature Restoration Law (NRL) this week, saying in an interview with the Financial Times that lawmakers should tone down green regulations because it is placing too much of the economic burden on ordinary citizens.
Metsola, who is an MEP with the EPP-affiliated Maltese Nationalist Party, made the comments in the context of the EPP being accused by left-wing parliamentarians of breaking ranks on the EU green agenda after the party group turned against the NRL at the committee stage in Brussels last month.
The NRL is a defining piece of EU green legislation that radically scales back farming in Europe, ostensibly to protect biodiversity, mandating that potentially 20% of the European landmass become fallow by 2030.
Both agricultural groups and populists have mobilised against the proposals, saying that it represents the intentional destruction of European agriculture at the behest of the green lobby at a time of rising food costs due to inflation. The prospect of the NRL has already triggered farmers’ protests in Cyprus, on top of years of protests by Dutch farmers against various EU regulations, as EPP officials fear that their traditional agricultural base is being undermined.
MEPs will have their final say on the highly contentious issue Wednesday morning at a plenary session in Strasbourg. The legislative process has exposed serious cracks in the EPP’s working relationship with the socialist S&D group. While a voting arrangement between the EPP and the S&D has been the cornerstone of a spate of high-profile EU green laws that have passed since 2019, that alliance seems to be breaking down as both sides look for alternative political allies less than a year ahead of European elections.
During a Monday morning debate in Strasbourg, S&D MEPs reiterated their claims that the EPP was bending the knee to agri lobbyists and the far Right. The EPP returned fire, saying that the NRL was simply too extreme to back. The EPP looks anxiously at populist rebellions in the Netherlands that have swept aside Christian Democratic parties in favour of the BBB as it seeks to prevent that scenario to be repeated elsewhere.
While pundits believe that the NRL will likely be defeated at tomorrow’s vote, the S&D has remained confident, saying that they have the numbers to get the legislation over the line by reaching out to green, federalist, and socialist groupings in the European Parliament.
Perhaps this provides a glimpse of what a future post-2024 European Parliament will look like as old alliances melt away. A final result on the NRL should be given around noon tomorrow.
