European politics can sometimes offer scenes of high political tension not suitable for sensitive hearts. This is what happened today in Strasbourg, where the Environment Committee of the European Parliament met today to rule on one of the most controversial proposals of this end of the legislature, the law on restoration of natural spaces, a regulation that the Popular Party European Union (EPP) and the extreme right have proposed to knock down to express their rejection of the European green agenda. Although they do not give up their goal, today they have not achieved it.
The motion presented by the PPE to ask the European Commission to withdraw the initiative has not achieved the majority that the conservative bloc was looking for. With emotion running high until the last minute, the vote ended in a tie, 44 votes in favor and 44 against, so that, in application of the chamber’s regulations, it has been automatically rejected. The jubilation has exploded in the room as soon as the result has been visualized. The voting, one by one, of all the amendments presented has made it impossible to complete the procedure today and the parliamentary commission will meet again on June 27 to finish the process of this initiative, which since 2030 sets binding objectives for the recovery of habitats and species whose situation has been degraded as a consequence of human activity and climate change.
The alliance between the Social Democratic group, the European United Left, the Greens and the Liberals has allowed, for the moment, to save the text, against which members of the EPP, Conservatives and Reformists and representatives of extreme right parties have voted. “Despite the intense boycott campaign of the European People’s Party, we have managed to save the Nature Restoration Law in the EU,” the rapporteur, César Luena (PSOE), tweeted jubilantly after the vote. Her colleague Esther de Lange (PPE), on the other hand, highlights the lack of a majority in favor of the proposal. “The fisheries and agriculture commissions have already rejected it, is Frans Timmermans going to get the message? Not like that!”, tweeted the representative of the Netherlands, where the fight for the future of the green agenda has become a major issue in national politics, especially following the recent victory of the BBB (Citizen Peasant Movement) party, which opposes this and other European proposals.
Whatever happens that day, the processing continues and the text will be debated by the plenary session of the European Parliament, but the tightness of the result announces a very complicated negotiation between the different ideological factions of the chamber. Pascal Canfin, president of the Environment committee, has accused the EPP of “blackmailing” their deputies into not voting in favor of the law. Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s Group, rejected the accusations but shortly after the Czech MEP Stanislav Pol?ák, who had announced that he would support the text, said that he would not vote against his group and would not participate in today’s vote. .
The text that comes out of the meeting on June 27, which in any case already represents a decrease in ambitions compared to the original proposal of the European Commission, will once again be submitted to amendments in the July plenary session. Also the Council, the institution where the member states are represented, must establish its position and a complicated debate is also announced there. The European agricultural employers’ association, the Committee of Community Agricultural Organizations and Cooperatives (Copa-Cogeca), has also asked the European Commission to withdraw the proposal as it considers that it sets unsustainable objectives that threaten food security. Instead, the scientific community, environmental groups and a broad alliance of companies, including corporations such as Nestle, Coca-Cola and Danone, support the initiative.
The matter promises to be one of the central themes of the campaign for the next European elections. Faced with increasing complaints about the speed at which the EU has advanced in its green agenda, accelerated as a result of Ukraine’s war to reduce energy dependence on Russia, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who presumably aspiring to a second term, he has hinted that he has gotten the message and has talked about looking at the “absorptive capacity” of the adopted rules. But Von der Leyen was talking about the future, for the legislature that begins in 2024, and she does not intend to withdraw any of the proposals that are on the table. This is what her detractors claim, among which she is, paradoxically, her own political family, the PPE.
