Nature Restoration Law’s potential collapse exposes flaws in EU decision-making process

29 Mar 2024 --- The EU vote on the Nature Restoration Law has been shelved after several member states withdrew support for the landmark regulation. European Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevičius, warns “the current deadlock raises serious questions and concerns as to the consistency and stability of the EU decision-making process.”

The European Parliament voted in favor of the law in February amid right-wing pushback and farmer protests. The Nature Restoration Law, a pillar of the European Green Deal, aims to restore at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030 and all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050, but landowners have questioned how it would be financed.

European diplomats dropped the vote from the agenda after Hungary joined Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden in opposing the new rules. Poland, Austria, Belgium and Finland reportedly intended to abstain from the vote, although the law’s text was agreed in “trilogue” discussions in November.

“In light of this deadlock, the EU and its member states’ international reputation is at stake,” Sinkevičius said during an Environment Council public discussion in Brussels, Belgium. “We inspired others, yet now we risk arriving empty-handed at COP16.”

At the UN’s COP15 Biodiversity Conference, European negotiators played a crucial role in securing a deal to protect 30% of the world’s land and sea under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, but the EU could now fail to deliver on this goal.

Italy said it still supports the Nature Restoration Law’s objectives but was not satisfied that the final agreement would protect farmers. Meanwhile, Hungary expressed concerns about “subsidiarity” — the ability to implement policies at the local level.

Environmentalists fight back
Environmental groups are naturally frustrated by the U-turn. The Restore Nature coalition, consisting of Bird Life Europe, Client Earth, EEB and WWF EU, says the law is the most significant piece of nature legislation in the EU since the 1990s but now faces an uncertain future, contradicting the EU’s commitment to biodiversity conservation.

Like Sinkevičius, the coalition warns the credibility of the EU is now at stake, particularly in a critical year of EU elections, while the deadlock jeopardizes the EU’s position as a world leader in environmental sustainability. The law’s collapse would cast doubt on the EU’s position as a world leader in environmental protection.

The NGOs urge the Belgian presidency to work urgently to break the deadlock and ensure the law is adopted before the summer break, and call on the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to intervene.

“We condemn all member states who are not supporting the law — at best, it suggests a deep failure to understand the situation we are in and what it means for the rights of citizens,” the coalition said in a statement.

“Allowing Viktor Orbán (Hungary’s prime minister) to sabotage the law flies in the face of science, citizens’ concerns, the European Parliament’s support and corporate backing for the law. It is completely incomprehensible and appalling to see the law being sacrificed on the altar of populist anti-green sentiment.”

Similarly, Greenpeace argues governments are playing with the lives of future generations and the livelihoods of the farmers they claim to protect by opposing this law.

“Governments torpedoing the first tiny steps toward restoring European nature is a disgrace. With no nature, there is no food and no future,” says Špela Bandelj Ruiz, biodiversity campaigner at Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe.

However, Copa-Cogeca, an organization representing EU farmers, regrets “the way it [the law] has been constructed or pushed through,” which, it claims, was “flawed from the start.” It stresses that landowners will need support to make long-term changes happen with short-term investments.

Economic and ecological burdens
As part of the Nature Restoration Law, member states would have to restore at least 30% of vulnerable habitats, from forests and grasslands to rivers and coral beds, from “poor” to “good” condition by 2030, increasing to 60% by 2040 and 90% by 2050.

According to the EU, over 80% of European habitats are in “poor shape.”Farmers claim the law could threaten their livelihoods but environmentalists argue there is no food without nature.

However, the European People’s Party (EPP) has repeatedly claimed that the law will threaten EU farmers’ livelihoods. Before the parliamentary vote, EPP chairman Manfred Weber said the law is “badly drafted” and “never up to the task in front of us.”

“Inflation is today driven by the rise of food prices in supermarkets. We have to ask our farmers to produce more and not less to stabilize inflation,” he added.

Hungary’s Minister of State for Environmental Affairs and the Circular Economy, Anikó Raisz, echoed these concerns during the recent Environment Council meeting, warning the law would “overburden the economy” amid food security concerns and the agriculture sector’s “sensitive situation.”

But Irish minister Eamon Ryan said, “To let this [law] go now means we go into European elections saying the European system is not working, we do not protect nature, we do not take climate seriously.”

Meanwhile, the EU plans to dilute its incoming deforestation regulation amid an international backlash.

By Joshua Poole