No progress was made by the Member States on Wednesday 14 June on the proposal for an EU ‘nature restoration’ regulation, which is fuelling all the controversy in Parliament, and they are not expected to agree on a draft Council political agreement before Thursday’s vote in the European Parliament’s Committee for Environment (ENVI), which looks set to be very close (see EUROPE 13200/21).
The Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) did not hold a substantive discussion on Wednesday, as the delegations had not yet seen the revised draft compromise that the Swedish Presidency intended to present to them to make minor adjustments to the draft political agreement (‘general approach’) discussed last week (see EUROPE 13198/10). Coreper is due to discuss this burning issue again on Friday.
“The Swedish Presidency is not sure it will propose putting the issue on the agenda for the Environment Council on 20 June”, a diplomatic source told EUROPE on Wednesday, adding that “many delegations (around 2/3) want to work towards a general approach on Tuesday”.
“The consensus among the Member States is more in favour of a general approach on Tuesday”, said another diplomatic source.
The last points requiring final adjustments concern support for the financing of measures, i.e. clarification of the European funds available, the principle of non-deterioration of habitats and a few requests concerning specific restoration objectives for marine or urban ecosystems.
On the eve of the vote, tension was mounting in the European Parliament. The prospect of a possible approval of the EPP group’s rejection amendment made the chair of the Committee on the Environment, Pascal Canfin (Renew Europe, French), whose own group is divided, particularly nervous.
“The vote will come down to one or two majority votes”, he predicted, although he felt that the compromise amendments to the ambitious report by César Luena (Spanish S&D) could be adopted (see EUROPE 13197/7).
“We are at a turning point because, on Thursday, this regulation may be the first Green Deal text not to be completed”, he warned at a press conference by video on Tuesday evening, likening the EPP’s rejection amendment to “a political attack based on unfounded arguments”.
In his view, the target of restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030 is “in line with the Kunming Montreal Agreement” on a global framework for biodiversity. And the compromise text “does not provide for the freezing of 10% of arable farmland, as restoration measures can be taken without affecting 1 m² of productive land”, not to mention the fact that “the compromise will not prevent the deployment of renewable energies”.
He also accused EPP President Manfred Weber of having “called all the Christian Democrat prime ministers to try not to vote in favour in the Council” and of having put “pressure on the MEPs in his group by threatening to remove them from the electoral lists” if they voted in favour.
“Pascal Canfin is lying, these are very serious accusations”, retorted François-Xavier Bellamy (EPP, French) on Wednesday. “We heard two delegations say that it’s worth voting for this text, the Irish and the Czechs, and nobody said to them ‘you’re going to get fired’”. In addition, the electoral list was not drawn up by Manfred Weber, he added.
The EPP, for its part, had accused the European Commission of political lobbying through a Business and Biodiversity platform managed by DG Environment, and criticised the Commission’s Executive Vice-President, Frans Timmermans, for putting pressure on MEPs to try and get them to vote in favour of the compromises (see EUROPE 13196/8). Anne Sander (EPP, French) reminded us of this on Wednesday.
In the 88-member ENVI committee, 8 out of 12 Renew Europe MEPs supported the text, and the group as a whole was 60 in favour and 40 against, according to Mr Canfin.
If the rejection amendment is adopted, all the compromise amendments fall.
See the amendments: https://aeur.eu/f/7g3 (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)