The European Union’s proposal for more birds, bugs, and grass in the bloc is stirring up the kind of drama usually reserved for hot-button issues such as abortion and gender topics.
Cheers erupted on Thursday, June 15th, in the environment committee of the EU Parliament following a vote to reject the Nature Restoration Directive in its entirety, a move rarely made.
Earlier in the day, the European People’s Party had tabled the motion to send the draft directive back to the EU Commission for rewriting, thinking it had successfully campaigned against the proposal. But conservatives were shocked when the vote was a tie: 44 in favour and 44 against, keeping the proposal alive.
The directive essentially pits ‘green’ objectives against European farmers. It lays out the requirements to rehabilitate changed and degraded ecosystems and puts strictures on active agricultural lands that farming groups say would negatively impact the productivity and economic viability of most European farms. It also includes requirements for waterways and fishing that the fishing sector says are economically damaging.
With the directive still on the table, the committee then had to address an enormous list of amendments, many of them designed to obliterate the text and many of them, again, splitting the votes into perfect halves of MEPs for and against the changes. Such was the number of amendments to vote on that after three hours in committee, with many amendments still to be decided on, some MEPS begged to go home and Pascal Canfin, the French MEP who chairs the environment committee, decided to postpone the rest of the voting on the file until the next meeting, June 27th.
The fight over peat bogs and butterflies is hardly finished.
“Supporting and implementing the Nature Restoration Law was a direct recommendation of the recent Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, you cannot get a more robust and democratic endorsement for legislation than that,” Irish Green MEP Grace O’Sullivan said in a statement. “I’m disappointed that many politicians continue to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to the immediate need for action on climate change and biodiversity loss. If we want to save our natural heritage in Ireland and beyond we need to vote on this now.”
In votes earlier in the month, the fisheries and agriculture committees rejected the proposal in its entirety. The proposal has been, perhaps, the most controversial of the agriculture-related Green Deal directives. Even in the agricultural committee, where both Left and right-leaning MEPs tend to be sympathetic to the farm lobby, the vote to reject the proposal was close. Knowing the proposals had more support in the environmental committee, some left-leaning MEPs argued it would be better to bring forward amendments than simply reject the proposal.
The file is the final decision of the environment committee, meaning that the version it approves will go before the plenary of the EU Parliament for the final decision on the parliament’s negotiating stance with the EU Council.
Dutch MEP Rob Roos with the ECR group told The European Conservative:
This law would be disastrous for the Netherlands. Everyone supports protecting nature. But this law would put all housing construction, agriculture, and infrastructure development in the Netherlands on hold. And once EU legislation is passed, it is almost impossible to get rid of, even when the outcomes are negative. We cannot allow this to happen. Now, the European Parliament has to reject this law in plenary, and the Netherlands has to build a coalition against the law in the Council.
On Monday, executives from 50 companies including Ikea, Nestlé, and H&M voiced their support for the directive in an open letter, which ignited the fury of Copa and Cosega, the European farmers’ association, which countered:
It’s also very easy for certain industries to support this initiative when they know that it will be farmers, foresters, and fishermen who will pay the highest cost for these reforms when they can promote these efforts in their communication strategies!
The statement from the Copa and Cosega reiterated its opposition on the grounds of “a lack of concrete sufficient and adequate financing for on-the-ground restoration and human resources to implement it; and the implementation of legally binding targets on agro- and forest ecosystems without adequate resources and an adequate assessment of the impact.” The farming sector has been warning that the EU Commission’s proposal of a paradigm shift in European agriculture is underfunded, impractical, and not thoroughly studied.
“The impact assessment on the Nature Restoration Law that was conducted is deficient when it comes to adequately representing the three pillars of sustainability,” the statement read.
A common statement regarding the Nature Restoration Law is that the cost-benefit ratio will be 8 to 1, with eight euro return for the society for every one euro spent. It is impossible to call this an impact assessment when the discussion focuses nearly solely on the benefits to biodiversity, and barely scrapes the surface of how much this will cost rural communities to implement, the loss of income from ceasing active production on their land, and transitioning from one business to another.
The farmer’s association is still hoping the Commission’s draft will be rejected by MEPs.
“The vote on the amendments to the text that were held today will make it even more impractical for European farmers, foresters, and fishermen if it is voted through as it stands. This is why we are continuing to call for it to be rejected by the Environment Committee and in the plenary session in the coming weeks,” the statement concluded.
