Excellent on biodiversity, can do better on climate, poor performance on CAP reform: the provisional assessment of the German EU Council Presidency as assessed by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) can be summarised as follows.
Released on 29 October, this assessment by the largest federation of European environmental NGOs will be followed by a full assessment at the end of the year.
“The German presidency of the EU has engaged seriously with the twin crises of biodiversity and climate, despite having to deal with the fallout of the Covid-19 crisis. But political realities and vested interests put the brakes on the needed transformative agenda, tarnishing the promise of the European Green Deal”, according to Patrick ten Brink, the EEB’s Director for European Policy.
Biodiversity. The Presidency achieved a major success in getting the EU Environment Council to endorse the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 at the same time as the European Environment Agency (EEA) sounded the alarm on the deplorable state of nature in Europe (see EUROPE 12588/3).
Climate. EEB welcomes the Presidency’s commitment to reach an agreement on the Climate Law and on raising the EU 2030 mitigation target to at least 55%. However, it regrets that the Environment Council only reached partial political agreement and not on the 2030 objective (see EUROPE 12588/1). It also points out that 55% is less than the 60% supported by Parliament, which is itself less than what science requires.
CAP and agriculture: the weak link. The EEB points to the Presidency’s inability to negotiate and mediate on CAP reform, which provides hundreds of billions of euros in subsidies, mainly to support industrial agriculture and which has been identified as the main cause of Europe’s biodiversity loss.
To view the mid-term evaluation: https://bit.ly/3mDF0Oo (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)